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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



PHILLIPS BROOKS YEAR BOOK 



SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS 




RT. REV. PHILLIPS BROOKS, D.D 



BY 



H. L. S. AND L. H. S. 



W 



<*-*^o^ 



\ 



"The thought is stronger for us hecause lie has thought it. The feeling is more 
vivid because he has felt it. And always he leads us to God by a way along 
which he has gone himself." — Preaching, p. 119. 




NEW YORK 

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

31 West Twenty-third Street *i ( 

1893 



w$ 



.6 

***** 



<§>*■ 
4 



Copyright, 1S93 
By E. P. DUTTON & CO. 



PRESS OF 

fcocfefoell anti tChurtfttll 

BOSTON 



PREFACE. 



HPO the friends of Bishop Brooks this little 
* book will come as no stranger. His ser- 
mons have had such living qualities in them, 
that they are read and re-read by many a 
one who never came under the influence of his 
marvellous personality. Their quality will be 
still farther tested, it seems to us, by this 
separating process of presenting their thoughts 
in fragments. If in this way the thoughts do 
not lose in suggestiveness, in vividness, and 
in strength, it will be a new testimony to the 
fact that the sermons are among the immortal 
few, which are for all time and not for one 
special age alone. 

The aim of the book is to group together 
cognate thoughts in sequence of time, as well 
as to represent fairly this man of large love 
for humanity and of absolute surrender to his 
Master. 

That he found a place for such books is 
sympathetically shown by his preface to a 



iv PREFACE. 

volume of selections published some years 
since. In this preface he says: ''The most 
notable quality of such books is their sugges- 
tiveness. ... It is not the fulness of their 
hands which makes them welcome. It is the 
delicacy and discrimination of the finger which 
they lay upon some spring in us and set some 
of our nature free. . . . Some suggestive word 
out of this book will fall upon a score of lives 
some morning, and will touch the key of each. 
Each will be better for it, but how differently ! 
One will do better trading ; another will do 
better teaching ; another's household life will 
be more pure and lofty." 

To those who have known Bishop Brooks in 
the past, and looked to him for guidance in the 
upward way, these daily thoughts from him 
will surely come with the added joy of memo- 
ries which are very precious. "In the old 
days it was strength to be with him ; in those 
to come it will be strength to remember 

him." 

The Editors. 



NOTE. — References to the Works of Bishop 
Brooks have been added, with the thought 
that some might like to turn to the context. 
They are respectively as follows : I., II., III., 
IV., V., to Vols, one, two, three, four, and 
five of the Sermons. " Influence " to "The 
Influence of Jesus." "Preaching" to the 
"Yale Lectures on Preaching." "Toler- 
ance " to "Tolerance." 



JANUARY i. 



Brethren, the time is short. — I. Cor. vii. 29. 

'"THE shortness of life . . . spreads the feel- 
1 ing of criticalness all through life, and 
makes each moment prepare for the next — 
makes life prepare for life. This is its power. 
Blessed is he who feels it. Blessed is he in 
whose experience each day and each hour has 
all the happiness and all the solemnity of a 
parent towards the day and the hour to which 
it gives birth, stands sponsor for it, holds it for 
baptism at the font of God. Such days are 
sacred in each other's eyes. The life in which 
such days succeed each other is a holy family, 
with its moments "bound each to each by 
natural piety." 1. 328 . 



Sail fast, sail fast, 
Ark of my hopes, Ark of my dreams ; 
Sweep lordly o'er the drowned Past, 
Fly glittering through the sun's strange beams ; 

Sail fast, sail fast. 
Breaths of new buds from off some drying lea, 
With news about the Future scent the sea ; 
My brain is beating like the heart of Haste, 
I'll loose me a bird upon this Present waste ; 

Go, trembling song, 
And stay not long ; oh, stay not long : 
Thou'rt only a gray and sober dove, 
But thine eye is faith and thy wing is love. 

Sidney Lanier. 



JANUARY 2. 



Ye have not passed this way heretofore, 

Joshua iii. 4. 

T T is good, then, for a man to come to a future 
which he does not know. It is good for you 
if God brings you to the borders of some 
promised land. Do not hesitate at any experi- 
ence because of its novelty. Do not draw 
back from any way because you never have 
passed there before. The truth, the task, the 
joy, the suffering, on whose border you are 
standing, oh, my friend, to-day, go into it 
without a fear ; only go into it with God — 
the God who has been always with you. Let 
the past give up to you all the assurance of 
Him which it contains. Set that assurance 
of Him before you. Follow that, and the new 
life to which it leads you shall open its best 
richness to you. v. 305. 

Grow old along with me ! 

The best is yet to be, 

The last of life, for which the first was made : 

Our times are in His hand 

Who saith, " A whole I planned, 

Youth shows but half; trust God; see all, nor be 

afraid." 

Robert Browning. 



JANUARY 3. 



\_The shepherds'^ made known abroad the saying 
which was told them concerning this child. 

Luke ii. 17. 

THE tale the shepherds tell fits the world we 
know — a world which has God in it, and 
yet in which even God works under the limita- 
tions of humanity, and where the power which 
is divine yet lingers and must slowly grow. 
Surely this is our world to which the Incarnation 
perfectly corresponds. 

Sureness and patience — sureness because it 
is God; patience because it is a child. Sure- 
ness and patience ! Oh, my friends, if you and 
I could catch them both from the shepherds' 
story, how clear this world would grow to us, 
and with what calm and faithful energy we 
should work away at it in these few years in 
which God has appointed us to work ; . . . 
satisfied, perfectly satisfied, if we can help 
the new Incarnation of Christ (which is the 
gradual embodiment of His divine soul in the 
life of a regenerated world) toward its com- 
pletion, as Mary and Joseph tended and taught 
the Divine Child who was in their humble 
house. Can we picture a life more soberly 
enthusiastic, more patiently devoted — a life 
more truly "without haste and without rest" 
than that life must be ? 

Christmas Sermon, p. 20. ax. 



JANUARY 4. 



Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it 
doth not yet appear what we shall be : but we know 
that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him ; 
for we shall see Him as He is. And every man 
that hath this hope in him purifieth himself even as 
He is pure. — I. John iii. 2, 3. 

]Y[OT merely, I shall grow so that I shall be 
* able to understand vastly more of what 
God is and of what He is doing. God also will 
be ever doing new things. He is forever active. 
He has purposes concerning me which He has 
not yet unfolded. Therefore each year grows 
sacred with wondering expectation. Therefore 
1 and the world may go forth from each old 
year into the new which follows it, certain 
that in that new year God will have for us 
some new treatment which will open for us 
some novel life. iv. 363. 



For lo ! in hidden deep accord, 
The servant may he like his Lord. 
And Thy love, our love shining through, 
May tell the world that Thou art true, 
Till those who see us see Thee too. 

A. L. Waring. 



JANUARY 5. 5 



There were two thieves crucified with Him. 

Matt, xxvii. 38. 

THE Saviour had left behind heaven ; He 
had left behind even the little heaven] i- 
ness which He had found upon the earth. All 
the disciples had forsaken Him and fled. The 
little flicker of sympathy which He had seen 
upon the face of Pilate He had lost now. He 
had come to the company of robbers. There 
were two thieves crucified with Him. 

That is the sight which we behold as we 
look at these three crosses standing out sharp 
and terrible against the sky. Into the darkest 
of earth's darkness, into the deepest conse- 
quences of sin where it was possible for inno- 
cence to go, the Incarnate One has gone. Our 
Immanuel, our God with us, is with the worst 
of us in His most awful misery. No child of 
God shall know any suffering which this love 
shall not fathom to its depths with him. 

1. 197. 198. 

Nay but thou knewest us, Lord Christ, thou knowest, 
Well thou rememberest our feeble frame, 

Thou canst conceive our highest and our lowest, 
Pulses of nobleness and aches of shame. 

Then tho' our foul and limitless transgression 
Grows with our growing, with our breath began, 

Raise thou the arms of endless intercession, 
Jesus, divinest when thou most art man ! 

Frederick W. H. Myers. 



JANUARY 6. 



/ am the Light of the world. — John viii. 12. 

CHRIST is unspeakably great and glorious 
in Himself. The glory which He had 
with His Father " before the world was," of 
that we can only meditate and wonder ; but 
the glory which He has had since the world 
was, the glory which He has had in relation to 
the world, is all bound up with the world's 
possibilities, has all consisted in the utterance 
and revelation and fulfilment of capacities 
which were in the very nature of the world on 
which His Light has shone. v . 4 , 5 . 

Tell us, thou clear and heavenly tongue, 
Where is the Babe but lately sprung ? 
Lies He the lily-banks among ? 
Or say, if this new Birth of ours 
Sleeps, laid within some ark of flowers 
Spangled with dew-light ; thou canst clear 
All doubts, and manifest the where. 
Declare to us, bright star, if we shall seek 
Him in the morning's blushing cheek, 
Or search the bed of spices through 
To find Him out. 

Star. — " No, this ye need not do ; 
But only come, and see Him rest, 
A princely Babe, in's mother's breast." 

Come then, come then, and let us bring 

Unto our pretty Twelfth-tide King 

Each one his several offering. 

Herrick 



JANUARY 7. 



Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's 
business ? — Luke ii. 49. 

AS Mary went back with her Son, realizing 
out of His own mouth that He was not only 
her Son but God's ; as she settled down with 
Him to their Nazareth life again, must not one 
single strong question have been upon her 
heart, " What does God want this Son of His 
to be ? Oh, let me find that out, that I may 
work with Him." And as you go into the house 
where you are to train your soul, realizing, 
through some revelation that has come to it, 
that it is God's soul as well as yours, one strong 
and singje question must be pressing on you 
too, "What does God want this soul of mine 
to be ? Oh, let me find that out that I may 
work for Him." . . . The Son of Mary was a 
revelation to the mother in whose care He lived. 
So a man's soul, his spiritual nature which is in- 
trusted to his care, is a perpetual revelation to 
him. If you can only know that your soul is 
God's child, that He is caring for it and training 
it, then it may become to you the source of deep 
divine communications. God will speak to you 
through your own mysterious life. He will 
show you His wisdom and goodness, not in the 
heaven above you, but in the soul within you. 
He will make you His fellow-worker in that 
which is the most divine work of His of which 
we can have any knowledge, the training and 
perfecting of a soul. iv. 40 , 4 i. 



JANUARY 8. 



WHAT will God do this year ? How will 
He come near to man ? It may be, oh, 
that it might be ! that He will break up this 
awful sluggishness of Christendom, this terri- 
ble torpidity of the Christian Church, and 
ifive us a great, true revival of religion. It 
may be that He will speak some great imperi- 
ous command to the brutal and terrible spirit 
of war, and will open the gate upon a bright 
period of peace throughout the world. It may 
be that He will draw back the curtain and 
throw some of His light upon the question of 
how the poor and the rich may live together in 
more cordial brotherhood. It may be that He 
will lead up from the depths of their common 
faith a power of unity into the sects of a 
divided Christendom. Perhaps He will smite 
this selfishness of fashionable life, and make it 
earnest. Perhaps by some terrible catastrophe 
He will teach the nation that corruption is ruin, 
and that nothing but integrity can make any 
nation strong. Perhaps this ! perhaps that ! 
We make our guesses, and no man can truly 
say. Only we know that with a world that 
needs so much, and with a God who knows its 
needs and who loves it and pities it so tenderly, 
there must be in the long year some approach 
of His life to its life, some coming of the Lord ! 

IV. 364, 365. 

Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, Thou that leadest 

Joseph like a flock ; 
Thou that dwellest between the cherubim, shine forth. 
Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh, stir up 

Thy strength, 
And come for salvation to us. 

Ps. LXXX. 1, 2. 



JANUARY 9. 



WHAT bulwarks have you, rich, luxurious 
men, built up between yourselves and 
the poverty in which hosts of your brethren 
are living ? What do you know, what do you 
want to know, of the real life of Jesus, who 
was so poor, so radical, so full of the sense of 
everything just as it is in God ? You tremble 
at the changes which are evidently coming. 
You ask yourself, How many of these first 
things, these fundamental things, are going 
to be disturbed ? Are property and rank and 
social precedence and the relation of class to 
class going to be overturned? Oh, you have 
got to learn that these are not the first things, 
these are not the fundamental things ! Behind 
these things stand justice and mercy. Behind 
everything stands God. He must speak to 
you. He will speak to you. Oh, do not try 
to shut out His voice. Listen to Him, that 
you may live. Be ready for any overturn- 
ings, even of the things which have seemed 
to you most eternal, if by them He can come 
to be more the King of His own earth. v . 8 7 . 



Cry unto Jesus, our Brother born to save us : 

O come, Son of Mary, 

Jesu, our Redeemer, 
O come, King triumphant, and reign on earth. 

Selwyn Image. 



io JANUARY 10. 



I know how to be abased. — Phil. iv. 12. 

DOVERTY seems to men to be like the old 
* fabled sphinx, — a mysterious being who 
has in herself the secrets of life, but who holds 
them fast, and tells them only in riddles, and 
devours the brave, unfortunate adventurers 
who try to guess at the wisdom she conceals, 
and fail. The result is that few men seek her 
wisdom voluntarily. v. 160. 

From street and square, from hill and glen, 
Of this vast world beyond my door, 

I hear the tread of marching men, 
The patient armies of the poor. 



Not ermine-clad or clothed in state, 
Their title-deeds not yet made plain, 

But waking early, toiling late, 
The heirs of all the earth remain. 



The peasant brain shall yet be wise, 
The untamed pulse grow calm and still ; 

The blind shall see, the lowly rise, 
And work in peace Time's wondrous will. 

Some day, without a trumpet's call, 
This news will o'er the world be blown : 

" The heritage comes back to all ! 
The myriad monarchs take their own ! " 

T. w. HlGGINSON. 



JANUARY ii. II 

If I then, your lord and Master, have waslied 
your feet, ye ought also to wash one another's feet. 

John xiii. 14. 

STRANGELY, on that solemn night the dis- 
ciples had fallen into an untimely quarrel 
which of them should be the greatest, and 
then the Lord Himself rose from the table and 
tied the towel round His waist, and went from 
one wondering disciple to another and washed 
the feet of all. Did Jesus compare Himself 
with each of those disciples, and own Himself 
the inferior of each ? He only said by His 
exquisite action that there was something in 
every one of them, in serving which even His 
divinity found no inappropriate employment. 
It was the truth of His whole Incarnation 
wrought into a homely picture. L 346 . 

I saw a Saint. — How canst thou tell that he 

Thou sawest was a Saint? — 
I saw one like to Christ so luminously 

By patient deeds of love, his mortal taint 
Seemed made his groundwork for humility. 

And when he marked me downcast utterly, 

Where foul I sat and faint, 
Then more than ever Christ-like kindled he ; 

And welcomed me as I had been a saint, 
Tenderly stooping low to comfort me. 

Christ bade him, " Do thou likewise." Wherefore he 

Waxed zealous to acquaint 
His soul with sin and sorrow, if so be 

He might retrieve some latent saint : 
" Lo, I, with the child God hath given to me ! " 

Christina Rossetti. 



12 JANUARY 12. 



" FJOR their sakes I sanctify Myself/' said 
1 Jesus ; and He hardly ever said words 
more wonderful than those. There was the 
power by which He was holy ; the world was 
to be made holy, was to be sanctified through 
Him. I am sure that you or I could indeed be 
strengthened to meet some great experience of 
pain if we really believed that by our suffering 
we were to be made luminous with help to 
other men. They are to get from us painlessly 
what we have got most painfully from God. 
There is the power of the bravest martyrdom 
and the hardest work that the world has ever 
seen. i. I7> l8 . 

Live thou deeply and wise ; 

Suffer as never before ; 

Know joy, till it cuts to the quick ; 

Eat the apple, Life, to the core. 

Be thou cursed 

By them thou hast blessed, by the sick 

Whom thou in thy weakness nursed. 

With thy strength the weak endue ; 

Be praised when 'twere better to blame ; 

In the home of thy spirit be true, 

Though the voice of the street cry shame. 

Be silent till all is done, 

Then return, in the light of the sun, 

And once more sing. 

Oh, then fling 

Into music thy soul ! . . . 

Tell the skies, 

And the world, that shall listen at last. 

Richard Watson Gilder. 



JANUARY 13. 13 

Ye shall be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem, 
and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the 
uttermost part of the earth. — Acts i. 8. 

YOU know the venerable argument, which 
was never very strong, and which halts 
and stumbles now from age and long dis- 
honorable service : " The heathen in Boston ! " 
we are told. " Look how poor a thing our 
home religion is ! Shall we not make our own 
religion strong, convert our own masses, con- 
quer our own sins, before we go around the 
world to preach our yet unappropriated Gospel 
to the heathen ? " It is not always those who 
are most earnest or active to complete our 
home religion who use such an argument. . . . 
Probably it is not an argument with which 
it is worth while to argue, but we cannot help 
thinking where, with such an argument in 
force, would have been the richness of 
Christian history ! If every land must for 
itself have made the very best and fullest use 
of the Gospel before it could offer it to any 
other land, how the great work would have 
halted and stayed in its first littleness ! Still, 
on the desolate fields of Galilee, or amid the 
ruins of Jerusalem, a few disconsolate and 
hopeless Jews would be telling to-day to one 
another the unbelieved and unused story of the 
cross. The earnest heart and manly intellect 
of Paul, full of the spirit of his Master, soon 
broke the spell of such a sophistry as that, and 
Europe saw the light through the dim medium 
of a Judaism which was itself still more than 
half darkness. iv. T 8 7 , 188. 



i 4 JANUARY 14. 



The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof ; 
the world and they that dwell therein. 

Ps. xxiv. 1. 

IT is not the desire to enforce the argument 
of a Foreign Missionary sermon, it is the 
sincere and deep conviction of my soul, when 
I declare that if the Christian faith does not 
culminate and complete itself in the effort to 
make Christ known to all the world, that faith 
appears to me to be a thoroughly unreal and 
insignificant thing, destitute of power for the 
single life, and incapable of being convincingly 
proved to be true, . . . The opened world — 
the simplified faith ! Surely this of all times 
is not the time to disbelieve in Foreign Mis- 
sions ; surely he who despairs of the power 
of the Gospel to convert the world to-day, 
'despairs of the noontide just when the sunrise 
is breaking out of twilight on the earth . . . . 
Distance has ceased to be a hindrance. 
Language no longer makes men total strangers. 
A universal commerce is creating common 
bases and forms of thought. For the first time 
in the history of the world there is a manifest, 
almost an immediate, possibility of a universal 
religion. No wonder that at such a time the 
missionary spirit which had slumbered for 
centuries should have sprung upon its feet, and 
the last fifty years should have been one of 
the very greatest epochs in missionary labor 
in the whole history of the world. 

IV. 166, 169, 190- 



JANUARY 15. 15 

I CAN conceive that Joseph and Mary may 
have wondered why those Gentiles should 
have come out of the East to worship their 
Messiah. But very soon the enlargement of 
their faith to be the world's heritage proved 
its power by making their faith a far holier 
thing for them than it could have been if it 
had remained wholly their own. Christ was 
more thoroughly theirs when through them 
He had been manifested to the Gentiles. And 
so always the enlargement of the faith brings 
the endearment of the faith, and to give the 
Saviour to others makes Him more thoroughly 
our own. n. l64 . 

Then I preached Christ : and when she heard the 
story — 

Oh, is such triumph possible to men? 
Hardly, my King, had I beheld Thy glory, 

Hardly had known Thy excellence till then. 



Oft when the Word is on me to deliver, 
Opens the heaven and the Lord is there ; 

Desert or throng, the city or the river, 
Melt in a lucid Paradise of air, — 

Only like souls I see the folk thereunder, 
Bound who should conquer, slaves who should be 
kings ; 

Hearing their one hope with an empty wonder, 
Sadly contented in a show of things. 

Then with a rush the intolerable craving 
Shivers throughout me like a trumpet call, — 

Oh, to save these ! to perish for their saving, 
Die for their life, be offered for them all ! 

F. W. H. Myers. 



16 JANUARY 16. 



OUR ordinary life with one another, what 
in the language of the world we call 
society, has so left and lost the spontaneous- 
ness of natural impulse and so failed to attain 
the highest conception of itself as the family 
of God, it so hangs fast in the dull middle 
regions of conventional propriety and selfish 
expediency, that it becomes not the fountain, 
but the grave, of individuality. influence, 99 . 

Duty — 'tis to take on trust 
What things are good, and right, and just ; 
And whether indeed they be or be not, 
Try not, test not, feel not, see not : 
Tis walk and dance, sit down and rise 
By leading, opening ne'er your eyes ; 
Stunt sturdy limbs that Nature gave, 
And be drawn in a Bath chair along to the grave. 
'Tis the stern and prompt suppressing, 

As an obvious and deadly sin, 
All the questing and the guessing 
Of the soul's own soul within : 
'Tis the coward acquiescence 

In a destiny's behest, 
To a shade by terror made, 
Sacrificing, aye, the essence 

Of all that's truest, noblest, best: 
'Tis the blind non-recognition 

Or of goodness, truth, or beauty, 
Save by precept and submission ; 
Moral blank, and moral void, 
Life at very birth destroyed. 

Arthur Hugh Clough. 



JANUARY 17. 17 



Lo, a great multitude, which no man could 
number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, 
and tongues, stood before the throne, and before 
the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in 
their hands ; and cried with a loud voice, saying, 
Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne 
and unto the Lamb. — Rev. vii. 9, 10. 

To him that over come th will I give to eat of the 
hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, 
and in the stone a new name wiitten, which no 
man knoweth, saving he that receiveth it. — Rev. 
ii. 17. 

NOWHERE do we find on earth that picture 
of society reconstructed by the idea of 
Jesus, society around the throne of God, 
which shines out upon us from the mysteri- 
ous promises of the Apocalypse ; the glory of 
which society is to be this — that while the 
souls stand in their vast choruses of hundreds 
of thousands, and all chant the same anthems 
and all work together in the same transcendent 
duties, yet each bears the sacred name written 
on the flesh of his own forehead, and carries 
in his hand a white stone, on which is written 
a new name which no man knoweth saving he 
that receiveth it. It is individuality empha- 
sized by company, and not lost in it, because 
the atmosphere in which the company is met 
is the idea of Jesus, which is the fatherhood 

01 LjOU. Influence, 99, 100. 

And thither thou, beloved, and thither I 
May set our heart and set our face, and go 
Faint yet pursuing home on tireless feet. 

Christina Rossetti. 



JANUARY 18. 



JESUS did not spend His life in trying not 
to do wrong, He was too full of the ear- 
nest love and longing to do right — to do His 
Father's wilL 

And so we see, by contrast, how many of 
our attempts at purity fail by their negative- 
ness. ... I do think that we break almost 
all our resolutions not to do wrong, while we 
keep a large proportion of our resolutions that 
we will do what is right. Habit, which is the 
power by which evil rules us, is only strong 
in a vacant life. It is the empty, swept, and 
garnished house to which the devils come back 
to hold still higher revel. i. l83 

Time was, I shrank from what was right 

From fear of what was wrong ; 
I would not brave the sacred fight. 

Because the foe was strong. 

But now I cast that finer sense 

And sorer shame aside ; 
Such dread of sin was indolence, 

Such aim at heaven was pride. 

So when my Saviour calls, I rise 

And calmly do my best ; 
Leaving to Him, with silent eyes 

Of hope and fear, the rest. 

I step, I mount where He has led ; 

Men count my haltings o'er : 
I know them ; yet though self I dread, 

I love His precept more. 

John Henry Newman. 



JANUARY 19. 19 

/^vH, the freedom with which the gates of the 
^-^ divine forgiveness are thrown open ! 
The Bible trembles and burns and overruns 
with offers ! They crowd on one another. 
Not waiting to be asked, not giving it re- 
luctantly, but following to tempt them with 
it, in His open hands, the eager Saviour brings 
His free forgiveness. — The great wonder of 
the Incarnation was the great miracle of that 
free pardon. — As if sin, with all its enormity, 
had yet this accidental glory, almost trans- 
figuring it, that it gave a new license of utter- 
ance to the unutterable love. The Forgiver 
stands upon the heights of the great human 
tragedy and summons man to be forgiven. 

Mss. 

Even with so soft a surge and an increasing, 
Drunk of the sand and thwarted of the clod, 

Stilled and astir and checked and never-ceasing 
Spreadeth the great wave of the grace of God. 

Bears to the marishes and bitter places 
Healing for hurt and for their poisons balm, 

Isle after isle in infinite embraces 
Floods and enfolds and fringes with the palm. 

F. W. H. Myers 



20 JANUARY 20. 



We love Him because He first loved us. 

I. John iv. 19. 

JOHN the Disciple had learned from Jesus, 
his Master, the truth of the priority of 
God — the truth that before everything is 
God. ... It is as when up the morning sky. 
all coldly beautiful with ordered ranks of cloud 
on cloud, is poured the glow of sunrise, and 
every least cloud, still the same in place and 
shape, burns with the transfiguring splendor 
of the sun. So is it when the priority of exist- 
ence is seen to rest in a Person, and the 
background of life is God. Then every new 
arrival instantly reports itself to Him, and is 
described in terms of its relationship to Him. 
Every activity of ours answers to some pre- 
vious activity of His. Do we hope ? It is 
because we have caught the sound of some 
promise of His. Do we fear ? It is because 
we have had some glimpse of the dreadfulness 
of getting out of harmony with Him. Are we 
curious and inquiring ? It is that we may 
learn some of His truth. Do we resist evil ? 
We are fighting His enemies. Do we help 
need ? We are relieving His children. Do we 
love Him ? It is an answer of gratitude for 
His love to us. Do we live ? It is a pro- 
jection and extension of His being. Do we 
die ? It is the going home of our immortal 
souls to Him. 

Oh, the wonderful richness of life when it is 
all thus backed with the priority of God ! It 
is the great illumination of all living. 

V. 4i> 45- 



JANUARY 21. 21 



J am He that liveth. — Rev. i. 18. 

THAT word, "liveth," is a word of con- 
tinuous, perpetual life. It describes the 
eternal existence which has no beginning and 
no end ; which, considered in its purity and 
perfectness, has no present and no past, but 
one eternal and unbroken present — one eter- 
nal now. It is the " 1 Am " of the Jehovah 
who spoke to Moses. " He that liveth " is the 
Living One ; He whose life is The Life, com- 
plete in itself, and including all other lives 
within itself. My dear friends, if anything 
has come to us to make us feel what a frag- 
mentary thing our human life is, I think there 
is no greater knowledge for us to win than 
that the life of one who loves us as Christ 
loves us is an eternal life, with the continu- 
ance and the unchangeableness of eternity. 

I. 212, 213. 

Strong Son of God, Immortal Love, 
Whom we that have not seen Thy face, 
By faith, and faith alone, embrace, 

Believing where we cannot prove ! 

Thine are these orbs of light and shade ; 

Thou madest Life in man and brute ; 

Thou madest Death ; and lo ! Thy foot 
Is on the skull which Thou hast made. 

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust ; 

Thou madest man, he knows not why ; 

He thinks he was not made to die ; 
And Thou hast made him : Thou art just. 

Tennyson. 



22 JANUARY 22. 



Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to 
minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation ? 

Hee. i. 14. 

TO him to whom life is but an episode, a 
short stage in the existence of eternity, 
who is always cognizant of the great surround- 
ing world of mystery, grief comes as angels 
came to the tent of Abraham. Laughter is 
hushed before them. The mere frolic of life 
stands still, but the soul takes the grief in as 
a guest, meets it at the door, kisses its hand, 
washes its travel-stained feet, spreads its table 
with the best food, gives it the seat by the fire- 
side, and listens reverently for what it has to 
say about the God from whom it came. . . . 
1 beg you, if God sends you grief, to take 
it largely by letting it first of all show you 
how short life is, and then prophesy eternity. 
Such is the grief of which the poet sings so 
nobly, — 

Grief should be 
Like joy, majestic, equable, sedate; 
Confirming, cleansing, raising, making free : 
Strong to consume small troubles ; to commend 
Great thoughts, grave thoughts, thoughts lasting to 
the end. 

But grief, to be all that, must see the end ; 
must bring and forever keep with its pain 

such a sense of the shortness of life that the 
pain shall seem but a temporary accident, and 
that all that is to stay forever after the pain 
has ceased, the exaltation, the unselfishness, 
the mystery, the nearness to God, shall seem 
to be the substance of the sorrow. 1. S _ C) 327 . 



JANUARY 23. 23 



Phillips BrooJzs entered into Life, 1893. 

Ye, like angels, appear 
Radiant with ardor divine. 

Ye alight in our van ! At your voice 
Panic, despair, flee away. 
Ye move through the ranks, recall 
The stragglers, refresh the outworn. 
Praise, re-inspire the brave ! 
Order, courage, return ; 
Eyes rekindling, and prayers, 
Follow your steps as ye go. 
Ye fill up the gaps in our files, 
Strengthen the wavering line, 
'Stablish, continue our march, 
On to the bound of the waste, 
On to the City of God ! 

Matthew Arnold. 

THE relation between preacher and congre- 
gation is one of the very highest pictures 
of human companionship that can be seen on 
earth. Its constant presence has given Chris- 
tianity, much of its noblest and sweetest color 
in all ages. It has much of the intimacy of the 
family, with something of the breadth and 
dignity that belongs to the State. It is too 
sacred to be thought of as a contract. It is a 
union which God joins together for purposes 
worthy of His care. When it is worthily real- 
ized, who can say that it may not stretch 
beyond the line of death, and they who have 
been minister and people to each other here be 
something holy and peculiar to each other in 
the City of God forever? preaching, 2 t6 



24 JANUARY 24. 



Thy brother shall rise again. — John xi. 23. 

MEN'S souls leaped to that word because 
they wanted to believe it, and had not 
dared wholly to believe it till He showed them 
that it was true. And now if we believe in 
Him, we do believe it, and death is really 
changed to us, and the dead are really living 
by the assurance of the living Christ. In 
those moments when Christ is most real to 
me, when He lives in the centre of my desires 
and I am resting most heavily upon His help, 
in those moments 1 am surest that the dead 
are not lost, that those whom this Christ, in 
whom I trust, has taken He is keeping. The 
more He lives to me, the more they live. 

1. 225, 226. 

Do we indeed desire the dead 

Should still be near us at our side? 

Is there no baseness we would hide? 
No inner vileness that we dread? 



I wrong the grave with fears untrue : 
Shall love be blamed for want of faith ? 
There must be wisdom with great Death : 

The dead shall look me through and through. 

Be near us when we climb or fall : 
Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours 
With larger other eyes than ours, 

To make allowance for us all. 

Tennyson. 



JANUARY 25. 25 



DO we not all feel the change that had 
come between Paul crying submissively 
"Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?" 
looking to an outside Christ for commandment, 
and the same Paul crying "Not I live, but 
Christ liveth in me!" rejoicing in the inspi- 
ration of an inward Saviour ? This was the 
perfect victory after which Paul was always 
longing so intensely. It did not come per- 
fectly to him in this world. It cannot to any 
of us. Dependent as it is upon the knowledge 
of Christ by the soul, it cannot be perfect till 
the soul's knowledge of Christ shall be perfect 
in heaven. . . . The great privilege of the 
Christian is deepening personal intimacy with 
Him who is the Christian's life, the Lord Jesus 
Christ. All comes to that at last. Christianity 
begins with many motives. It all fastens itself 
at last upon one motive, which does not ex- 
clude, but is large enough to comprehend, all 
that is good in all the rest, " That I may know 
Him." Those are Paul's words. How con- 
stantly we come back to his large, rounded 
life, as the picture of what the Christian is 
and becomes. n . 50) 5I . 

Christ ! I am Christ's ! and let the name suffice you, 
Ay, for me too He greatly hath suificed : 

Lo with no winning words I would entice you, 
Paul had no honor and no friend but Christ. 



Ay, for this Paul, a scorn and a reviling, 

Weak as you know him and the wretch you see, 

Even in these eyes shall ye behold His smiling, 
Strength in infirmities and Christ in me. 

F. W. H. Myers. 



26 JANUARY 26. 

The things which are seen ca-e temporal ; but 
the things which are not seen are eternal. 

II. Cor. iv. 18. 

'"THE Incarnation is the perpetual interpre- 
* tation of our life. Jesus cries, " It is 
finished," on His cross, and at once it is evi- 
dent that that finishing is but a beginning ; 
that it is a breaking to pieces of the temporal, 
that it may be lost in the eternal ! That cross 
is the perpetual glorification of the shortness 
of life. In its light we, too, can stand by the 
departing form of our own life, or of some 
brother's life, and say, " It is finished," and 
know that the finishing is really a beginning. 
The temporary is melting away like a cloud 
in the sky, that the great total sky may all be 
seen. The form in which the man has lived 
is decaying, that the real life of the man may 
be apparent. The fashion of this world is 
passing away ; the episode, the accident of 
earth is over, that the spiritual reality may be 
clear. It is in the light of the cross that the 
exquisite picture of Shelley, who tried so hard 
to be heathen and would still be Christian in 
his own despite, is really realized : 

The one remains, the many change and pass ; 

Heaven's light forever shines ; earth's shadows fly ; 
Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, 

Stains the white radiance of eternity, 
Until death tramples it to fragments. 1. 331, 332 . 



JANUARY 27. 27 



Lord, for the erring thought 
Not into evil wrought : 
Lord, for the wicked will 
Betrayed and baffled still : 
For the heart from itself kept, 
Our thanksgiving accept. 

For ignorant hopes that were 
Broken to our blind prayer : 
For pain, death, sorrow, sent 
Unto our chastisement : 
For all loss of seeming good, 
Quicken our gratk de. 

W. D. HOWELLS. 

OLORD, by all Thy dealings with us, 
whether of joy or pain, of light or dark- 
ness, let us be brought to Thee. Let us value 
no treatment of Thy grace simply because it 
makes us happy or because it makes us sad, 
because it gives us or denies us what we 
want ; but may all that Thou sendest us bring 
us to Thee, that knowing Thy perfectness, 
we may be sure in every disappointment that 
Thou art still loving us, and in every darkness 
that Thou art still enlightening us, and in 
every enforced idleness that Thou art still 
using us; yea, in every death that Thou art 
giving us life, as in His death Thou didst give 
life to Thy Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ. 
Amen. v. 323. 



JANUARY 28. 



That light 
Fringing the far hills, all so fair, so fair, 
Is it not dawn? I am dying, but 'tis dawn. 

Upon the mountains I behold the feet 
Of my Beloved : let us forth to meet ' ' — 
Death. 

This is death. I see the light no more ; 
I sleep. 

But like a morning bird my soul 
Springs singing upward, into the deeps of heaven, 
Through world on world to follow Infinite Day. 

Dinah Muloch Craik. 

HOW shall I bind myself to eternity except 
by giving myself to Him who is eternal 
in obedient love ? Obedient love ! Loving 
obedience ! That is what binds the soul of 
the less to the soul of the greater everywhere. 
I give myself to the eternal Christ, and in His 
eternity I find my own. In His service I am 
bound to Him, and the shortness of that life, 
whose limitations in any way shut me out 
from Him, becomes an inspiration, not a bur- 
den to me. Oh, my dear friends, you who 
with Christian faith have seen a Christian die, 
tell me, was not this short life then revealed 
to you in all its beauty ? Did you not see 
completely that no life was too long which 
Christ had filled with the gift and knowledge 
of Himself ; no life was too short which de- 
parted from the earth only to go and be with 
Him in Heaven forever ? 1. 332< 



JANUARY 29. 29 



OUR souls are sick with the sight of hunger 
and nakedness and want. . . . Cannot 
He who fed the hungry Jews feed these hungry 
Americans ? We are ready to doubt the old 
story of His mercy, or to think He has forgotten 
to be gracious and ceased to care for these 
modern nations whom He has not "chosen." 
And then, just as we are ready to give up to 
despair in one or other of these forms, we 
catch a glimpse of something better, of some- 
thing which makes us see that the manna and 
the miraculous loaves and fishes, made per- 
petual, would be demoralizing and degrading. 
Some light comes on the necessity and nobility 
of struggle. We see the greater glory of the 
new miracle — the miracle of the advancing 
civilization, whose purpose is not to do away 
with struggle, but to make the conditions of 
struggle fair and the prospects of struggle 
hopeful. Into the spirit of that miracle we 
cast ourselves, not expecting to see the world's 
misery suddenly removed, but sure that at last 
the world, in and through its misery, will tri- 
umph over its misery by patience and diffused 
intelligence and mutual respect and brotherly 
kindness and the grace of God. v . 30, 31. 

I have considered the days of old — 

The years of ancient times. 
Will the Lord cast off forever ? 

Hath God forgotten to be gracious ? 

Hath He in anger shut up His tender mercies? 
And I said, This is my infirmity ; 
But I will remember the years of 

The right hand of the Most High. 

Ps. LXXVII. 5-10. 



30 JANUARY 30. 

MEN say, " The world has been disturbed 
before. Classes have clashed with one 
another. Governed and governors, employed 
and employers, rich and poor, have come to 
blows in other days, but things have al- 
ways adjusted themselves again. The stronger 
have grown kinder ; the weaker have grown 
humbler ; the paternal governor has grown 
more fatherly ; the obedient subject has 
grown more filial, and things have gone on 
again as smoothly as before. " " So shall it be 
again/ ' men say. That is what they expect 
as the outcome of all this conflict. But other 
men see clearer. ... It is not going to be 
enough that the strong should once more grow 
kinder and the weak grow humbler. The bal- 
ance and distribution of strength and weak- 
ness is being altered, must be altered more 
and more. The sources of artificial strength 
and artificial weakness are being dried up. 
Governors and governed, employers and em- 
ployed, are coming to be coworkers for the 
same ends. Not the old mercies repeated, but 
new mercies going vastly deeper than the old, 
— these are what men are beginning to see 
that the world is needing and that God is giv- 
ing to the world He loves. v. 30. 

Every man is his brother's bane, 
Where sloth brings honor and labor scorn. 

Of fellowship yet shall the earth be fain, 
Hasten we, hasten the happy morn. 

Life is hopeless in park and slum, 
Where sloth brings honor and labor scorn. 

All shall be well in the days to come, 
Hasten we, hasten the happy morn ! 

C. W. Beckett. 



JANUARY 31. 31 



BUT before I seriously undertake to make of 
him [the poor man] an independent, in- 
telligent, struggling brother-man, to wake him 
from his torpor, to set him on his feet, to kindle 
in his soul that fire \vhich keeps my own soul 
full of light and warmth, I must have some- 
thing more than the impulse of a wise econ- 
omy. This needs a sympathy which makes 
his life, with all its needs and miseries, my 
own. It demands of me to wrestle with his 
enemies, to undertake a fight for him which 
he is not yet ready to undertake himself, to 
sacrifice myself that I may make his true self 
live. n. 343. 



He stood upon the world's broad threshold ; wide 
The din of battle and of slaughter rose ; 
He saw God stand upon the weaker side, 
That sank in seeming loss before its foes ; 
Many there were who made great haste and sold 
Unto the cunning enemy their swords ; 
He scorned their gifts of fame, and power, and gold, 
And, underneath their soft and flowery words, 
Heard the cold serpent hiss ; therefore he went 
And humbly joined him to the weaker part, 
Fanatic named, and fool, yet well content 
So he could be the nearer to God's heart, 
And feels its solemn pulses sending blood 
Through all the widespread veins of endless good. 

James Russell Lowell. 



32 FEBRUARY i. 



H^HERE are some things of the individual life 
* which the individual cannot get save in 
the company of fellow-men. There are some 
parts of his own true life always in his 
brethren's keeping, for which he must go to 
them. That the individual may find and be 
his own truest and fullest self, Jesus, his 
Master, leads him to his fellows. The wed- 
ding guest at'^Cana, the Pharisee at Levi's 
table, the sisters with their restored brother, 
the brothers of the Lord in the house of the 
carpenter, — all, just as soon as Jesus sancti- 
fied and blessed the society in which they 
lived, saw coming to them as it were out of 
the heart of that society a selfhood which 
no solitary contemplation could have gained. 
Each of them found his Father among his 
brethren — reached God through the revela- 
tion of other human lives. influence, 97 . 

I tell you this for a wonder, that no man shall then be 

glad 
Of his fellow's fall and mishap to snatch at the work 

he had. 

Then all mine and all thine shall be ours, and no more 

shall any man crave 
For riches that serve for nothing but to fetter a friend 

for a slave. 

For all these shall be ours and all men's, nor shall any 

lack a share 
Of the toil and the gain of living in the days when the 

world grows fair. 

William Morris. 



FEBRUARY 2. 33 

\Simeoii\ said. Lord now kites t Thou Thy 
servant depart in peace, according to Thy word : 
For mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, which 
Thou hast prep a?'ed before the face of all people ; 
A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of 
Thy people Israel, — Luke ii. 29-32. 

THE waiting Jewish race — the men and 
women — nay, the whole world which is 
seen peering into the darkness, sure that some 
light is coming — Zacharias, Mary, Simeon, 
Anna, Herod, Peter, and Andrew — every man 
and woman of whom we read, is ready for the 
wonder of recognition, the wonder which comes 
with the fulfilment of their dreams and hopes 
and fears, . . . the long-imagined, long-ex- 
pected, half-despaired-of manifestation of God 

in human life. Christmas Sermon, 7 , 8. 

To every Christian there come times when 
all the strangeness disappears from the divine 
humanity which stands radiant at the centre 
of his faith. He finds it hard to believe in him- 
self and in his brethren perhaps ; but that 
Christ should be and should be Christ appears 
the one reasonable, natural, certain thing in 
all the universe. In Him all broken lines unite; 
in Him all scattered sounds are gathered into 
harmony. . . . The day of our salvation has 
not come till every voice brings us one mes- 
sage ; till Christ, the Light of the world, 
everywhere reveals to us the divine secret of 
our life ; till everything without joins with the 
consciousness all alive within, and "the Spirit 
itself beareth witness with our spirits that we 
are the children of God." v. i 5 , 23 . 



34 FEBRUARY 3. 



When He came near, He beheld the city, and 
wept over it. — Luke xix. 41. 

TELL me what becomes of the hard young 
man, proud of his unsensitiveness, even 
pretending to be more unsensitive than he is, 
incapable of enthusiasm, incapable of tears ; 
what becomes of him beside the knightliness 
of a sorrow such as that ? The little child is 
sensitive without a thought of effort. The old 
man often feels the joy and pain of men as if 
the long years had made it his own. But in 
between, the young man is hardened by self- 
absorption ; when all the time he ought — 
with his imagination, with his power to real- 
ize things he has not been nor seen — to 
go responsive through the world, answering 
quickly to every touch, knowing the burdened 
man's burden just because of the unpressed 
lightness of his own shoulders, feeling the sick 
man's pain all the more because his own flesh 
never knew an ache, buoyant through all with 
his unconquerable hope, overcoming the world 
with his exuberant faith, and farthest from 
sentimentality by the abundance and freedom 
of the sentiment which fills him. Be sure that 
there is no true escape from softness in making 
yourself hard. It is like freezing your arm to 
keep it from decay. Only by filling it with 
blood and giving it the true flexibility of health, 
so only is it to be preserved from the corrup- 
tion which you fear. Be not afraid of senti- 
ment, but only of untruth. Trust your sen- 
timents, and so be a man. v. 9 s, 99. 



FEBRUARY 4. 35 



Thou shalt worship the Lord ihy God, and Hint 
only slialt thou serve. — Matt. iv. 10. 

\ A TOE to the man who loses the faculty of 
worship, the faculty of honoring and 
loving and fearing not merely something better 
than himself, but something which is the 
absolute best, the perfect good, — his God ! 
The life is gone out of his life when this is 
gone. There is a cloud upon his thought, a 
palsy on his action, a chill upon his love. 
Because you must worship, therefore you must 
have God. n. 103. 

Alone Lord God, in whom our trust and peace, 
Our love and our desire, glow bright with hope ; 
Lift us above this transitory scope 

Of earth, these pleasures that begin and cease, 

This moon which wanes, these seasons which decrease ; 
We turn to Thee ; as on an eastern slope 
Wheat feels the dawn beneath night's lingering cope, 

Bending and stretching downward ere it sees. 

Alone Lord God, we see not yet we know ; 

By love we dwell with patience and desire, 
And living so and so desiring pray : 
Thy will be done in earth as heaven to-day ; 

As yesterday it was, to-morrow so ; 

Love offering love on love's self-feeding fire. 

Christina Rossetti. 



36 FEBRUARY 5. 



PICTURE Jesus of Nazareth set down in 
Rome with all the flashing splendor of 
imperial power all around Him ; or in Athens, 
with the wisdom of the philosophers on every 
side. Would the young Jew have cast His 
faith away? Too real for Him the visions that 
had come to Him in Nazareth ! Too real for 
Him the glory of His Father, which had filled 
His Father's house ! He would have laid fresh 
hold upon that truth and love which He had 
never so needed until now. He would have 
stood undazzled in the Roman glory, unpuzzled 
in the Grecian wisdom, because He would have 
known that in His heart He carried the light by 
which they should give light to Him. It would 
have been like David calmly saying in the 
presence of the terrors of Goliath, " The Lord 
that delivered me out of the paw of the lion and 
out of the paw of the bear, He will deliver me 
out of the hand of this Philistine." In . Io8> io9 . 

How amiable are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts ! 
My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of 
the Lord. 

For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand. 
I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, 

than to dwell in the tents of wickedness. 
For the Lord God is a sun and shield : the Lord will 

give grace and glory : 
No good thing will He withhold from them that walk 

uprightly. 
O Lord of Hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth 

in Thee, Ps. lxxxiv. 



FEBRUARY 6. 37 



Thou slialt hide them in the secret of Thy presence 
from the pride of man. Thou shalt keep them 
secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues. 

Ps. xxxi. 20. 

This tract which the river of Time 

Now flows through with us, is the plain. 

Gone is the calm of its earlier shore. 

Border'd by cities, and hoarse 

With a thousand cries, is its stream. 

And we on its breast, our minds 

Are confused as the cries which we hear, 

Changing and shot as the sights which we see. 

And we say that repose has fled 
Forever the course of the river of Time. 

Matthew Arnold. 

OF how much of our best society they seem 
to be the exact description ; of how many 
heartless houses filled with a poor pretence of 
social life, David's words tell the whole story. 
" The pride of man and the strife of tongues/' 
the lack of humility, the lack of love, the lack 
of peace ! To live in such a world, and yet to 
keep a soul in us at all, is very hard. We 
must have something under and beyond such 
a world to flee to to renew our life, to really 
recreate ourselves. That security and recrea- 
tion of our life cannot come except in the source 
from which our life first came. We must go 
back to God. L 8o . 



38 FEBRUARY 7. 



I will hear what the Lord God may say in me. 

Blest is the soul that hears its Lord's voice speaking 

within it, 
And takes the word of comfort from His lips. 
Blest are the ears that catch the throbbing whisper of 

the Lord, 
And turn not to the buzzings of the passing world ; 
That listen not to voices from without, 
But to the truth that teaches from within. 
Blest are the eyes 
That, shut to outer things, 
Are busied with the inner life. 
Blest are they who penetrate within, 
And more and more by daily use 
Strive to prepare themselves 
To take the heavenly mysteries. 
And blest are they who try to give their time to God, 
And shake them free from all the burden of the world. 

Thomas A Kempis. 

HTO put aside everything that hinders the 
highest from coming to us, and then to 
call to us that highest which, nay, Who is 
always. waiting to come, — fasting and prayer, 
— this, as the habit and tenor of a life, is 
noble. As an occasional effort even, if it is 
real and earnest, it makes the soul freer for the 
future. A short special communion with the 
unseen and eternal, prevents the soul from 
ever being again so completely the slave of the 
things of sense and time. n. 214. 



FEBRUARY 8. 39 



Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every 
word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. — 
Matt. iv. 4. 

EVERY word of God is both truth and duty, 
revelation and commandment. He who 
takes any new word of God completely gets 
both a new truth and a new duty. He, then, 
who lives by every word of God, is a man who 
is continually seeing new truth and accepting 
the duties that arise out of it. And it is for 
this, for the pleasure of seeing truth and doing 
its attendant duty, that he is willing to give up 
the pleasures of sense, and even, if need be, 
to give up the bodily life to which the pleas- 
ures of sense belong. 1. 273 . 

It is not happiness I seek, 
Its name I hardly dare to speak : 
It is not made for man on earth, 
And Heaven alone can give it birth. 

Fixed duty claiming every power, 
And human love to charm each hour, — 
These, these, my soul, make Blessedness ; 
I ask no more, I seek no less. 

And yet I know these are too much ; 
My very being's life they touch, 
Without them all, oh ! let me still 
Find Blessedness in God's dear will. 

Louisa J. Hall. 



40 FEBRUARY 9. 



/^HRIST entered into our shame. Deep 
^^ into its very heart He entered. The 
blackness of its darkness was around Him. 
But the purpose of His sacrifice was that we 
might be brought to Him. We have not learnt 
the whole if we have only felt His condescen- 
sion. Not till He who has stooped to us has 
lifted us up to Him must we be satisfied. Not 
till He who hangs upon the cross beside us has 
said to us, u To-day thou shalt be with me in 
Paradise.' ' L 2og . 



We know the way : thank God who hath showed us 

the way ! 
Jesus Christ our Way to beautiful Paradise, 
Jesus Christ the Same for ever, the Same to-day. 

Christina Rossetti. 



" Coelum patria, Christus via," says the old 

motto: "Heaven the country, Christ the 

way." But it is true that He who is the way 

is also the life into which the way leads ; and 

Christ must be country as well as path. 

1, 306. 



FEBRUARY 10. 41 

TO know first of all and deepest of all, that 
that battle which goes on within us is 
God's battle, is of supreme importance. What 
are our sins ? What is your selfishness, your 
untruthfulness, your cruelty ? Is it something 
which hurts and hinders you? Indeed it is. 
But beyond that it is something which usurps 
a kingdom which belongs to God. It is His 
enemy. And every movement of your con- 
science, every sense of usurpation and of 
incongruity, is not merely the revolt of your 
own outraged soul. It is also the claim of the 
true King upon His Kingdom. It is the sound 
of the monarch's trumpet summoning the re- 
bellious castle to surrender. Believe this, and 
what a dignity enters into the moral struggle 
of our life. It is no mere restless fermentation, 
the disturbed nature out of harmony with itself. 
It is God, with the great moral gravitation of 
universal righteousness, dragging this stray 
and wayward atom back into Himself. O deep 
divine mysterious process, that goes on wher- 
ever in silent chamber or in crowded street the 
humbled penitent lies prostrate in the dust, or 
the resolute struggler stands wrestling with 
his temptation ! Iv . 2?6 . 

Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate Thee? 

And am not I grieved with those that rise up against 

Thee? 
I hate them with perfect hatred ; I count them mine 

enemies. 
Search me, O God, and know my heart : try me, and 

know my thoughts : 
And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me 

in the way everlasting. Ps. cxxxix. 21-24. 



42 FEBRUARY n. 



Then the devil leave th Him ; and, behold, angels 
came and ministered unto Him, — Matt. iv. 1 1. 

JESUS had seen Satan. He had seen with 
what greedy and confident eyes Satan 
looked at that humanity of His, as if it were 
something that belonged to Him. Nay, in His 
own humanity He had felt a treacherous some- 
thing, that was ready to respond to Satan and 
to own his mastery. Strong and victorious He 
came away. But was there no new solemn 
insight into this humanity which He had taken? 
Was not the Incarnation more than ever awful 
to the Incarnate One ? He, the sinless, had 
gone up and looked over the edge into the 
deepest depths of sin. He needed the minis- 
try of angels, and He surely came down the 
mountain serious and sad. And so it is with 
you, when you follow your Lord into that ex- 
perience. It may be that you come out by 
His grace pure and thankful, but you come out 
like Him, serious and sad, for you have looked 

down as He looked into the possibility of sin. 

i. 255, 256. 



O Father, out of whose Hand none is able to pluck 
Thine own, 
Have pity on us, and be our defence against 
The hosts that rise up against us. 

Book of Litanies. Neale. 



FEBRUARY 12. 43 



But often, in the world's most crowded streets. 

But often, in the din of strife, 

There rises an unspeakable desire 

After the knowledge of our buried life, 

A thirst to spend our fire and restless force 

In tracking out our true, original course ; 

A longing to inquire 

Into the mystery of this heart which beats 

So wild, so deep in us, — to know 

Whence our thoughts come and where they go. 

And many a man in his own breast then delves, 

But deep enough, alas, none ever mines ! 

Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn, 
From the soul's subterranean depths upborne 
As from an infinitely distant land, 
Come airs, and floating echoes, and convey 
A melancholy into all our day. 

Matthew Arnold. 



JUST at the outset of our work, to try us 
whether we are good for our work, God's 
Spirit takes us into some solitude, some expe- 
rience which, whether it be enacted far off in 
the woods, or in the very centre of a crowded 
street, makes us realize for the first time that 
our deepest life is alone, is ours and no other 
man's ; that we cannot live in our fathers and 
our mothers ; that we must live for ourselves. 
That is our wilderness, — that first realization 
of our individuality. !. 269 . 



44 FEBRUARY 13. 



A \ 7HILE it is evident that in those terrible 
W hours (of the Temptation) the whole 
nature of Jesus was submitted to a fearful 
struggle, and that, as not the least among the 
elements that made up the ordeal, His intel- 
lectual judgments were shaken, His knowledge 
of truth was invaded by tumultuous doubt, 
His sight of His Father was obscured, — yet, 
at the last, and as the sum of all, the question 
was not one of intelligence but of will. It was 
a choice of obediences that made the real crisis. 
It was the rejection of Satan's " Fall down 
and worship me," and the clear acceptance of 
"Thou shalt serve the Lord thy God,"- that 
marked the victory. " Then the Devil leaveth 
Him, and behold angels came and ministered 
unto Him." The moment that the obedience 
of the life was established, the mental tumult 
settled into peace within it. influence, 229 . 



I worship thee, sweet will of God ! 

And all thy ways adore, 
And every day I live I seem 

To love thee more and more. 

Thou wert the end, the blessed rule 
Of our Saviour's toils and tears ; 

Thou wert the passion of His Heart 
Those three and thirty years. 

f. w. Faber. 



FEBRUARY 14. 45 



It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone. 

Matt. iv. 4. 

WHAT a man finds in his own conscious- 
ness, he is strengthened by being able 
also to recognize in the whole history- of his 
race. " It is written " long ago, this which he 
is doing now. He is only tracing over with 
his blood the unfaded characters which other 
men have written in theirs. It is not a mere 
whim of his, this conviction that it is better to 
serve God than to eat bread. It is the cor- 
porate conviction of mankind. That is a very 
mysterious support, but it is a real one. It 
plants the weak tree of your will or mine into 
the rich soil of humanity. Do not lose that 
strength. Do not so misread history that it 
shall seem to you when you try to do right as 
if you were the first man that ever tried it. 
Put yourself with your weak little struggle 
into the company of all the strugglers in all 
time. Recognize in your little fight against 
your avarice, or your untruthfulness, or your 
laziness, only one skirmish in that battle whose 
field covers the earth, and whose clamor rises 
and falls from age to age, but never wholly 
dies. See in the perpetual struggle of good 
and evil that the impulse after good is eternal, 
and the higher needs are always asserting 
their necessity. In their persistent assertion 
read the prophecy of their final success and 
take courage. L 277 . 



46 FEBRUARY 15. 



CHRIST is at once the inspiration of the 
individual and also the assertion — such 
"as the world has never heard before — of the 
identity of man. . . . Here are you, seemingly 
insignificant, not making much of yourself, not 
seeming to be worthy to be made much of. 
Oh, if you could know two things about your-, 
self : first, that you are a different creature 
from any that the world has ever seen, and 
second, that you are a true utterance of the 
same spirit of life out of which sprang Isaiah 
and Saint John. v. 66, 6 7 . 



Take the least man of all mankind, as I ; 
Look at his head and heart, find how and why 
He differs from his fellows utterly : 



When you acknowledge that one world could do 
All the diverse work, old yet ever new, 
Divide us, each from other, me from you, — 

Why where's the need of temple, when the walls 
O' the world are that ? What use of swells and falls 
From Levites' choir, Priests' cries, and trumpet-calls ? 

That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows, 

Or decomposes but to recompose, 

Become my universe that feels and knows ! 

Browning. 



FEBRUARY 16. 47 



Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them ; for they 
know not what they do. — Luke xxiii. 34. 

r^ LOSE to His Father always, ... He was 
^-^ hid in the secret of His Father's pres- 
ence. We cannot know His peace. It must 
have been so absolute. There must have 
been such a pity in His heart when they 
tormented Him, when they tied Him to a 
column and scourged Him, when they nailed 
Him to the cross at last, and all the while were 
looking to see Him give way and tremble, and 
all the while the soul which they thought they 
were reaching and torturing was far off, be- 
yond their reach, hid in the secret of God's 
presence, hid in God. It was as if men flung 
water at the stars and tried to put them out, 
and the stars shone on calmly and safely and 
took no notice of their persecutors, except to 
give them light. L 96i 97 . 

May forgiveness, O Lord, we beseech Thee, proceed 
from the Most High. May it succour us in our misery ; 
may it cleanse us from our offences ; may it be granted 
to penitents ; may it plead for mourners ; may it bring 
back those who wander from the faith ; may it raise up 
those who are fallen into sins ; may it reconcile us to 
the Father ; may it confirm us with the grace of Christ ; 
may it conform us to the Holy Spirit. 

Bright's Ancient Collects. 



48 FEBRUARY 17. 

Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O 
woman, great is thy faith : be it unto thee even as 
thou wilt. — Matt. xv. 28. 

THIS power of weakness over strength 
comes to perfection in Jesus. . . . Every 
beggar whom He met was a king to Him. . . . 
When you and I are weak, Christ in a true 
sense owns the claim of our weakness and 
comes to serve us with His love. Behold, how 
this transfigures life ! The times that make 
us weakest and that force our weakness most 
upon us, and make us most know how weak 
we are, those are our coronation times. The 
days of sickness, days of temptation, days of 
doubt, days of discouragement, days of be- 
reavement and of the aching loneliness which 
comes when the strong voice is silent and the 
dear face is gone, these are the days when 
Christ sees most clear the crown of our need 
upon our foreheads, and comes to serve us 
with His love. 

Faith is the king's knowledge of his own 
kingship. A weak man who has no faith in 
Christ is a king who does not know his own roy- 
alty. But the soul which in its need cries out 
and claims its need's dominion, . . . "Come 
to me, O Christ, for I need Thee/' finds itself 
justified. Its bold and humble cry is honored 
and answered instantly ; instantly by its side 
the answer comes: "Great is thy faith : be 
it unto thee even as thou wilt. What wilt thou 
that I should do unto thee? " In . i 75 , i 77 , i 7 8. 



FEBRUARY 18. 49 



NOT only a Christ to stand outside and 
support with the strong hands of His 
forgiveness, but a Christ to come in and 
strengthen by the power of His incorporated 
life. Christ is the Staff we lean on, the Rock 
we stand on, the Light that leads us, the Master 
on whose breast we lie ; but He is also the 
Bread of Life. He is many things outside of 
us, — Wisdom, Righteousness, Redemption. 
He is also something inside of us, Sanctifica- 
tion. He says, " Lean on Me, stand on Me, 
take hold of Me and walk." But when He 
takes up His deepest word it is this, — "Feed 
on Me ; unless you feed on Me you have no 
life in you." He says, "Look and see how 
good God is ; touch Me and feel God's mercy; 
hear Me and I will tell you how He loves you." 
But at the last this comes as a commandment 
of the deepest faith, the promise of the highest 
mercy, — " O taste and see that the Lord is 
gracious." 11, 244 , 245 - 

Him first to love great right and reason is, 
Who first to us our life and being gave, 
And after, when we fared had amiss, 
Us wretches from the second death did save ; 
And last, the food of life, which now we have, 
Even He Himself, in His dear Sacrament, 
To feed our hungry souls, unto us lent. 

Spenser. 



50 FEBRUARY 19. 

My sword shall be bathed in heaven. — Ps. xxxiv. 5. 

GOD is about to smite the wickedness of 
the earth. His sword is in His hand. 
And then, as a part of the terrible announce- 
ment, there come these words: "My sword 
shall be bathed in heaven." What does that 
mean ? It draws back the curtain which sep- 
arates the visible world from the invisible. It 
reveals celestial regions in which there are 
also great struggles going on. It lifts up our 
eyes to the grander movements of the vast 
world of spirits. And then it declares that the 
sword which is to be used in fighting what 
seems to be the petty wars of the Hebrews 
and the Edomites, is the same sword which 
has been used in these celestial conflicts ; that 
the means and instruments of righteousness 
upon the earth must be the same with the 
means and instruments of righteousness in 
the heavens. ... In no part of His universe 
can God be passive. Everywhere He must be 
the foe of the evil and the friend of the good. 
Everywhere therefore throughout the great 
perplexed tumultuous universe, we can see the 
flashing of His sword. " His sword ! " we say, 
and that must mean His nature uttering itself 
in His own form of force. Nothing can be in 
His sword which is not in His nature. And so 
the sword of God in heavenly regions must 
mean perfect thoroughness and perfect justice 
contending against evil and self-will, and bring- 
ing about everywhere the ultimate victory of 
righteousness and truth. IV . 2 6 3 , 2 6 4 . 



FEBRUARY 20. 5 1 



THAT every struggle of the people of God 
against evil in this world must be fired 
with eternal principles, must be instinct with 
thoroughness and with justice ; that is the 
plain prosaic meaning of the word of God to 
Isaiah which declared, "My sword shall be 
bathed in heaven/' ... 

So it is possible for us to deal with every sin, 
little or great, that we discover in our hearts. 
To count it God's enemy and to fight it with all 
His purity and strength ; that is what it means 
for us that our sword should be bathed in 
heaven! Courage can only come with thor- 
oughness. But with absolute thoroughness, 
courage must come. Resolve to-day that 
every strength of God which it is your right 
to invoke, because you are His child, and 
which prayer and consecration can bring into 
you from Him, shall be devoted to the over- 
coming of your sin, and then your sin shall 
certainly be overcome. IV . 265 , 279 . 

Was the trial sore ? 
Temptation sharp? Thank God a second time ! 
Why comes temptation but for man to meet 
And master, and make crouch beneath his foot, 
And so be pedestalled in triumph ? Pray 
" Lead us into no such temptations, Lord ! " 
Yea, but, O Thou whose servants are the bold, 
Lead such temptations by the head and hair, 
Reluctant dragons, up to who dares fight, 
That so he may do battle and have praise. 

Browning. 



52 FEBRUARY 21. 

Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the 
world : and this is the victory that overcometh the 
world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh 
the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the 
Son of God. — I. John v. 4, 5. 

MAKE, then, this Incarnation the one per- 
vading power of a man's life. Let his 
first feeling about this world always be, " God 
has been here, and so God is here still," and 
have you not made him strong to walk unpol- 
luted and unscorched through the furnace of 
the world's most fiery corruptions ? It is the 
low system, the constitution that is broken 
down and depressed in tone, that takes the 
contagion. . . . And a deep, living sense of 
God is the true vitality of a human soul which 
quenches the poisonous fires of corruption, as 
powerless to be hurt by it as the cold, calm 
sea is to be set on fire by the coals that you 
may cast burning into its bosom. Think of 
the day after Jesus had called John and Peter 
and Nathanael to be His servants. They had 
begun to hear His words of eternal life. They 
had become dimly conscious of so much above 
and beyond. Do you think it was as hard for 
them to pass unspotted by the places of temp- 
tation in Chorazin and Capernaum ? They 
had tasted the powers of the world to come. 
And the true way, the only true way, to make 
any man who is a slave to this world, catching 
its corruption, free and pure, is to make him 
see another world, the supernatural world, the 
world of spiritual life above him and below him 
and stretching out before him into eternity, 
made visible by Christ's Incarnation, i, l87 . 



FEBRUARY 22. 53 



Oft have I brooded on defeat and pain, 
The pathos of the stupid stumbling throng. 
These I ignore to-day and only long 
To pour my soul forth in one trumpet strain, 
One clear, grief-shattering, triumphant song, 
For all the victories of man's high endeavor, 
Palm-bearing, laurelled deeds that live forever, 
The splendor clothing him whose will is strong. 
Hast thou beheld the deep glad eyes of one 
Who has persisted and achieved ? Rejoice ! 
On naught diviner shines the all-seeing sun. 
Salute him with free heart and choral voice, 
'Midst flippant, feeble crowds of spectres wan, 
The bold, significant, successful man. 

Emma Lazarus. 

ALL history bears witness that when God 
means to make a great man, He puts the 
circumstances of the world and the lives of 
lesser men under tribute. He does not fling 
His hero like an aerolite out of the sky. He 
bids him grow like an oak out of the earth. 
All earnest, pure, unselfish, faithful men who 
have lived their obscure lives well, have 
helped to make him. God has let none of them 
be wasted. A thousand unrecorded patriots 
helped to make Washington ; a thousand 
lovers of liberty contributed to Lincoln. . . . 
And any man who in his small degree is living 
like the child of God, has a right to all the 
comfort of knowing that God will not let his 
life be lost, but will use it in the making of 
some great child of God, as He used centuries 
of Jewish lives, prophets, priests, patriots, 
kings, peasants, women, children, to make the 
human life of His Incarnate Son. 11.133,134. 



54 FEBRUARY 23. 



Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His 
Mother. — John xix. 25. 

JUST as He was dying the Sufferer turned 
^ and gave His Mother to the care of His 
disciple. " Woman, behold thy son ! " " Son, 
behold thy mother ! " It was a pang within 
all the other pangs, a woe that perceptibly 
added to their wretchedness, when among the 
faces that pitied Him He saw her face who 
bore Him, the face into which He had looked 
up from His cradle. . . . The pain of any 
human being touched Him, but in His Mother's 
pain, humanity pressed itself closest to His 
sensibility and gave Him a special distress, 
proportioned to His special love. 

Influence, 181, 182. 

O Lord Jesus, who didst meet Thy Mother in her 
sorrow, and yet, because of the love Thou bearest us, 
wouldst not be turned aside from suffering, help us to 
give up all things for Thy love ; going wherever Thou 
shalt call us, and doing whatsoever Thou wouldst 
have us do. 

By Thy Cross and Passion, and Thy pity on Thy 
Mother, Let us stand with her beneath Thy Cross, and 
share the cup of her sorrows. 

Book of Litanies. Neale. 



FEBRUARY 24. 55 



IT is not, if we understand it rightly, a sign 
of decreasing, but of increasing spiritu- 
ality, that miracles have ceased. And so it 
is a truer discrimination that recognizes the 
presences of God in men, the saints that are 
in the world, not by the miracles they work 
but by the miracles they are, by the way in 
which they bring the grace of God to bear on 
the simple duties of the household and the 
street. The sainthoods of the fireside and of 
the market-place — they wear no glory round 
their heads ; they do their duties in the 
strength of God ; they have their martyrdoms 
and win their palms, and though they get into 
no calendars, they leave a benediction and a 
force behind them on the earth when they go 
up to heaven. l i3Ij I32 . 

A SONG FOR THE LEAST OF ALL SAINTS. 

Love is the key of life and death, 

Of hidden heavenly mystery ; 
Of all Christ is, of all He saith, 

Love is the key. 

As three times to His Saint He saith, 
He saith to me, He saith to thee, 

Breathing His Grace-conferring Breath : 
"Lovestthou Me?" 

Ah, Lord, I have such feeble faith, 
Such feeble hope to comfort me : 

But love it is, is strong as death, 
And I love Thee. 

Christina Rossettl 



56 FEBRUARY 25. 



ONCE think it possible that God should fill 
a humanity with Himself, once see 
humanity capable of being filled with God, 
and can you conceive of His not doing it ? 
Must there not be an Incarnation ? Do you 
not instantly begin to search earth for the holy 
steps ? Once think it possible that Christ 
can, and are you not sure that Christ must 
give Himself for our Redemption ? So only, 
when it seems inevitable and natural, does the 
Christhood become our pattern. Then only 
does it shine on the mountain-top up toward 
which we can feel the low lines of our low life 
aspiring. The Son of God is also the Son of 
Man. Then in us, the sons of men, there is 
the key to the secret of His being and His 
work. Know Christ that you may know 
yourself. But, oh ! also know yourself that 
you may know Christ ! v. i 4 , 15. 



" O Saul, it shall be 
A Face like my face that receives thee ; a man like to 

me, 
Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever ! a hand like 

this hand 

Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee ! See 

the Christ stand! " 

Browning. 



FEBRUARY 26. 57 

HPHAT is the time in life when confirmation 
* ought to come. Not in mere childhood, 
when the life is still wholly under other peo- 
ple's influence ; not, unless it has been put 
off by neglect before, in those later years 
when manhood is an old story, and the nature 
is hard with long doubt and hesitation ; but it 
ought to come just when the new freedom 
is beginning to be felt, when obedience to 
authority is opening into personal responsi- 
bility, when the implicit faith is just asking 
for its soul of reason, and anticipating the 
changes which shall make it the peculiar faith 
of this peculiar life, — then it is that con- 
firmation has its fullest meaning. It is the 
gathering up of all the faith and dutiful impulse 
of the past that it may go before the life into 
the untried fields. v. 295 , 29 6. 

The shadow of the Almighty's cloud 

Calm on the tents of Israel lay, 
While drooping paused twelve banners proud, 

Till He arise and lead the way. 

Then to the desert breeze unrolled, 

Cheerly the waving pennons fly, 
Lion or eagle — each bright fold 

A lodestar to a warrior's eye. 

So should Thy champions, ere the strife, 
By holy hands o'er-shadowed kneel, 

So, fearless for their charmed life, 
Bear> to the end, Thy Spirit's seal. 

Keble. 



58 FEBRUARY 27. 



IS there nothing that Christ as your Friend, 
your Lord, your Saviour, wants you to do 
that you are leaving undone to-day ? Do you 
doubt one instant that with His high and deep 
love for your soul, He wants you to pray ? — 
And do you pray ? Do you doubt one instant 
that it is His will that you should honor and 
help and bless all these men about you who are 
His brethren ? — And are you doing anything 
like that ? Do you doubt one instant that His 
will is that you should make life serious and 
lofty ? — And are you making it frivolous and 
low? Do you doubt one instant that He wants 
you to be pure in deed and word and thought ? 
— And are you pure ? Do you doubt one instant 
that His command is for you openly to own 
Him and declare that you are His servant be- 
fore all the world ? — And have you done it ? 
These are the questions which make the whole 
matter clear. No, not in quiet lanes, nor in 
bright temple-courts as once He spoke, and not 
from blazing heavens as men seem sometimes 
to expect, — not so does Christ speak to us. 
And yet He speaks ! I know what He, there 
in His glory, He here in my heart, wants me 
to do to-day, and I know that I am not mis- 
taken in my knowledge. It is no guess of 
mine. It is His voice that tells me. 

V. 356, 357. 

" To-day is but a little holding, lent 
To do a mighty labor. We are one 
With heaven and the stars, when it is spent 
To serve God's aim ; else, we die with the sun." 



FEBRUARY 28. 59 



This is the will of God, even your sanctifica- 
tion. — I. Thess. iv. 3. 

A S we stand before the font we solemnly 
dedicate ourselves to a struggle with the 
passion and inner power of sinfulness which 
shall know no rest until it is completely 
quenched and dead, until we love goodness 
perfectly, and hate sin perfectly, even as God 
does. . . . When one desires to be holy, and 
knowing that it is God's will as well as his 
that he should be, throws himself on that will 
of God and clings to it with eager hands, cer- 
tain that it must carry him to success, for him 
there is no fear. He is as sure to reach the 
prize he seeks, as the patient stars are to be 
led of God around their shining orbits. 

Baptism and Confirmation, 12, 28. 



We lift to Thee our failing eyes, 

Our failing wills to Thee : 
O Great Lord God of Battles, rise, 
Till foes and shadows flee, 
And death being swallowed up of life shall cease to be. 

Christina Rossetti. 



6o FEBRUARY 29. 



Behold, I set before you this day a blessing, . . . 
if ye obey the commandments of the Lord your 
God. — Ex. xi. 26, 27. 

THE setting of the less finite into the com- 
plete infinite nature Christ calls by 
various names. Sometimes it is faith. You 
must believe in God. Sometimes it is affection. 
You must love God. Always what it means is 
the same thing. You must belong to God. 
Then His life shall be your life. I am come to 
bring you to Him that so you may have life 
and have it more abundantly. Sometimes He 
seems to gather up His fullest declaration of 
this vital connection of man with God and call 
it in one mighty word, "Obedience." You 
must obey God and so live by Him. . . . 
When God says to His people, " Do This and 
Live," He is not making a bargain. He is de- 
claring a necessary truth. He is pronouncing 
a necessity. "He who does My Will, pos- 
sesses Me." For My Will is the broad ave- 
nue to the deepest chambers of My Life. There 
is nothing in Me that he who obeys Me may 
not reach according to his power. " Son, thou 
art ever with me and all that I have is thine." 
So speaks the Infinite God to the obedient 
child. But to disobedience the door is closed. 
Whatever wealth there may be is none of his. 
Obedience means mastery and wealth. There- 
fore, let us glorify obedience, which is light 
and life, and dread disobedience, which is 
darkness and death. harvard monthly, 180. 



MARCH i. 61 



" ZOOMING nearer and nearer to Christ/' 
^-^ we say ; that does not mean creeping 
into a refuge where we can be safe. It means 
becoming better and better men ; repeating 
His character more and more in ours. The 
only true danger is sin, and so the only true 
safety is holiness. What a sublime ambition ! 
How it takes our vague, half-felt wishes and 
fills them with reality and strength, when the 
moral growth, which makes a man complete, 
is put before us, not abstractly, but in this 
picture of the dearest and noblest being that 
our souls can dream of, standing before us 
and saying to us, " Come unto me;" standing 
over us and praying for us, " Father, bring 
them where I am." L 3I3 . 

But, all I felt there, right or wrong, 
What is it to Thee, who curest sinning ? 

Am I not weak as Thou art strong ? 
1 have looked to Thee from the beginning, 

Straight up to Thee through all the world 

Which, like an idle scroll, lay furled 

To nothingness on either side : 

And since the time Thou wast descried, 

Spite of the weak heart, so have I 

Lived ever, and so fain would die, 

Living and dying, Thee before ! 

Browning. 



62 MARCH 2. 



My God! my God! why hast Thou forsaken Me! 

Matt, xxvii. 46. 

T^HE joy of loving and the pain which 
* only love can bring beat tumultuously 
together in this cry. But underneath them 
both there is obedience, and the idea from 
which obedience proceeds. Not for one mo- 
ment does He think of coming down from the 
cross to find His Father. Whether He find 
Him or lose Him, whether the issue of His 
love be the perfect joy of union or the ex- 
quisite suffering that separation brings," He 
must obey Him first. Even if His doing of 
His Father's will seems to shut Him out of 
His Father's presence, there cannot be a 
question ; the will must be done. 

Influence, 178. 



It were not hard to suffer by His hand, 

If thou couldst see His face ; but in the dark ! 

That is the one last trial : — be it so. 

Christ was forsaken, so must thou be too ; 

How couldst thou suffer but in seeming, else? 

Thou wilt not see the face nor feel the hand. 

Only the cruel crushing of the feet, 

When through the bitter night the Lord comes down 

To tread the wine-press. — Not by sight, but faith, 

Endure, endure, — be faithful to the end. 

Ugo Bassi's Sermon in the Hospital. 



MARCH 3. 63 

Whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend 
in one point, he is guilty of all. — James ii. 10. 

WHY ? Because the consistent, habitual 
breakage of one point proves that the 
others were kept under the law of constraint, 
not under the law of liberty. It proves that 
the tendency of the nature's liberty, which 
breaks forth in this one place, is a bad ten- 
dency and not a good one. ... It takes only 
one volcano anywhere in the earth to show 
that the heart of the earth is fire, and that 
some day it may burst through the thickest 
crust. . . . This is the tragedy of our single 
sins, dear friends. . . . Down the crack which 
some one transgression makes in the fair face 
of a smooth and blooming life, we can see 
waiting for God's judgment-word, the fire 
before which that life shall be at last con- 
sumed with fervent heat. n. r93i I94 . 

I peered within, and saw a world of sin : 
Upward, and saw a world of righteousness : 

Downward, and saw darkness and flame begin 
Which no man can express. 

I girt me up, I gat me up to flee 

From face of darkness and devouring flame : 
And fled I had, but guilt is loading me 

With dust of death and shame. 

Yet still the light of righteousness beams pure, 
Beams to me from the world of far-off day : — 

Lord who hast called them happy that endure, 
Lord, make me such as they. 

Christina Rossetti. 



64 MARCH 4. 



Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 
. . . Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. 

Matt. xxii. 37, 39. 

HPHOU shalt love. The duty of loving, — 
A there is nothing of that in the codes of 
abstract duty. It is impossible to exclude that 
from its fundamental place in the system of 
duty whose constant spring is in the father- 
hood of God. ... Of this quality in duty it 
is no Christian's place to be ashamed or afraid. 
None of us may melt it away or sink it out of 
sight. In its prominence lies the soul of the 
duty that we do. We may not try to make 
that duty cold and soulless which has its true 
being in the central commandment which is 
its living soul, — "Thou shalt love." 

Influence, 61, 62. 

Love is alone the worthy law of love : 
All other laws have pre-supposed a taint : 
Love is the law from kindled saint to saint, 

From lamb to lamb, from tender dove to dove. 

Love is the motive of all things that move 
Harmonious by free will without constraint. 
Love learns and teaches : love shall man acquaint 

With all he lacks, which all his lack is love. 

Because Love is the fountain, I discern 
The stream as love : for what but love should flow 
From fountain Love ? not bitter from the sweet ! 
I ignorant, have I laid claim to know? 
Oh teach me, Love, such knowledge as is meet 

For one to know who is fain to love and learn. 

Christina Rossetti. 



MARCH 5. 65 



Unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of 

s wings. 
Mal. iv. 2. 



righteousness arise with healing in his wings, 



As a bird in meadows fair 

Or in lonely forest sings 
Till it fills the summer air, 

And the greenwood sweetly rings, 
So my heart to Thee would raise, 
O my God, its song of praise 
That the gloom of night is o'er, 
And I see the sun once more. 

If Thou, Sun of Love, arise 

All my heart with joy is stirred, 
And to greet Thee upward flies, 

Gladsome as yon little bird, 
Shine Thou in me clear and bright 
Till I learn to praise Thee right ; 
Guide me in the narrow way, 
Let me ne'er in darkness stray. 

From the German, 1580. 

CHRIST, to the Christian growing older, 
seems to be what the sun is to the de- 
veloping day, which it lightens from the morn- 
ing to the evening. When the sun is in the 
zenith in the broad noon-day, men do their 
various works by his light ; but they do not 
so often look up to him. It is the sunlight 
that they glory in, flooding a thousand tasks 
with clearness, making a million things beau- 
tiful. But as the world rolls into the evening, 
it is the sun itself at sunset that men gather 
to look at and admire and love. n. 5I( 5i2 . 



66 MARCH 6. 



ROUTINE is a terrible master, but she is a 
servant whom we can hardly do with- 
out. Routine as a law is deadly. Routine as 
a resource in the temporary exhaustion of im- 
' pulse and suggestion is often our salvation. 
Coleridge told the story when he sang — 

" There will come a weary day 
When, overtaxed at length, 
Both hope and love beneath 
The weight give way. 
Then with a statue's smile, 
A statue's strength, 
Patience, nothing loth, 
And uncomplaining, does 
The work of both." 

But patience, while a strong power, is not 
quick-sighted, and works in ways and habits 
which have been made before. 

Yale Lectures, 93. 

Then with a ripple and a radiance thro' me 
Rise and be manifest, O Morning Star ! 

Flow on my soul, thou Spirit, and renew me, 
Fill with Thyself, and let the rest be far. 

Safe to the hidden house of thine abiding 
Carry the weak knees and the heart that faints, 

Shield from the scorn and cover from the chiding, 
Give the world joy, but patience to the saints. 

F. W. H. Myers. 



MARCH 7. 67 



EVERY now and then a conscience, among 
the men and women who live easy, 
thoughtless lives, is stirred, and some one 
looks up anxiously, holding up some one of the 
pretty idlenesses in which such people spend 
their days and nights, and says "Is this 
wrong? Is it wicked to do this?'" And 
when they get their answer, " No, certainly 
not wicked," then they go back and give their 
whole lives up to doing their innocent little 
piece of uselessness again. Ah, the question 
is not whether that is wicked, whether God 
will punish you for doing that. The question 
is whether that thing is keeping other better 
things away from you ; whether behind its 
little bulk the vast privilege and dignity of 
duty is hid from you ; whether it stands be- 
tween God and your soul. If it does, then 
it is an offence to you, and though it be your 
right hand or your right eye, cut it off, pluck 
it out, and cast it from you. The advantage 
and joy will be not in its absence, for you will 
miss it very sorely, but in what its loss re- 
veals, in the new life which lies beyond it, 
which you will see stretching out and tempt- 
ing you as soon as it is gone. n. 213, 214. 

We sinners beseech thee to hear us, Good Lord, 

That by Thy Love the world maybe crucified to us and 

we unto the world, 
That we may crucify the flesh with its affections and 

lusts, 
That we may daily take up our cross and follow Thee ; 
That we may live in Thee and die in Thee. 

Book of Litanies. Neale. 



68 MARCH 8. 



And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and 
satisfy the afflicted soul, then shall thy light rise in 
obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday, 

Isa. lviii. 10. 

r~^ O ; do your duty, giving to every task the 
sublimest motive which you know and 
which you can bring to bear upon it. Get at 
the essence of goodness, which is not in its 
enthusiasms or delights, but in its heart of 
consecration. Sometimes the consecration 
may be all the more thorough and complete 
when the joy of consecration seems to be 
farthest away. And yet every consecration 
made in the darkness is reaching out toward 
the light, and in the end must come out into 
the light, strong in the strength which it won 
in its life and struggle in the dark. 

V. 175. 

Through love to light ! Oh wonderful the way 
That leads from darkness to the perfect day ! 
From darkness and from sorrow of the night 
To morning that comes singing o'er the sea. 
Through love to light ! Through light, O God, to Thee, 
Who art the love of love, the eternal light of light ! 

Richard Watson Gilder. 



MARCH 9. 69 



Jesus . . . saith, I thirst, — John xix. 28. 

"pHE physical sensitiveness of Jesus no doubt 
helped, as no other medium could have 
helped, that deep, mysterious process, the de- 
velopment of the self-consciousness of Jesus. 
Why should I not believe that out of the 
physical difficulties which tore His hands He 
plucked the full flower of His knowledge of His 
own soul, and, wrapped up at the heart of that, 
His knowledge of the soul of His Father? . . . 
To Jesus, and to His disciples, and to all men 
who know the bodily life as He knew it and 
taught them to know it, the pain and happi- 
ness of which the human body is capable must 
be very noble messages. 

Influence, 170, 173. 



I lift mine eyes, and see 

Thee, tender Lord, in pain upon the tree, 

Athirst for my sake and athirst for me. 



Yea, look upon Me there 

Compassed with thorns and bleeding everywhere, 

For thy sake bearing all and glad to bear. 

Christina Rossetti. 



jo MARCH 10. 



"COR a few weeks let these obtrusive world- 

1 linesses which block the door of our hearts 

stand back ; and let the way be clear that He 

who longs to enter in and help us may come 

and meet no obstacle. This is our lenten task. 

" If any man will hear My voice and open unto 

Me, I will come in and sup with him," says 

Jesus. To still the clatter and tumult a little 

so that we may hear His voice, and to open 

the door by prayer, that is the privilege and 

duty of these coming weeks. 

ii. 215. 

'Tis true, we cannot reach Christ's fortieth day ; 
Yet to go part of that religious way 

Is better than to rest : 
We cannot reach our Saviour's purity ; 
Yet are we bid, " Be holy e'en as He." 

In both let's do our best. 

Who goeth in the way which Christ hath gone, 
Is much more sure to meet with Him, than one 

That travel leth by-ways. 
Perhaps my God, though He be far before, 
May turn, and take me by the hand, and more, 

May strengthen my decays. 

Yet, Lord, instruct us to improve our fast 
By starving sin, and taking such repast 

As may our faults control : 
That every man may revel at his door, 
Not in his parlour ; banqueting the poor, 

And among those his soul. 

George Herbert. 



MARCH ii. 71 



Within a cavern of man's trackless spirit 

Is framed an Image so intensely fair, 
That the adventurous thoughts that wander near it 

Worship, and as they kneel tremble, and wear 
The splendor of its Presence, and the light 

Penetrates their dreamlike frame 
Till they become charged with the strength of flame. 

Percy Bysshe Shelley. 

YOU have your good, your spirituality, your 
better life ; something that bears witness 
of God. In every man's heart there is a holy 
city, a Jerusalem, where, loud or muffled, in 
some voice from the altar or some light above 
the mercy-seat, the Heavenly Father bears 
testimony of His goodness and tempts us to 
Himself. It may be very dim, but there it is 
in all of us. L 45j 46 . 

Lighten me, good Jesus, with the bright light within, 

And from my heart's cell drive away all shadows. 

Bridle my many wandering thoughts ; 

Fight bravely for me, conquer the wild beasts — 

Enticing lusts, I mean, 

That in Thy strength there may be peace, 

And that Thy praise may evermore resound 

Within Thy holy temple — 

A conscience that is pure. 

Bless and sanctify my soul with blessing from above, 
That it may be Thy holy dwelling place, the home of 

Thine eternal glory, 
And that nothing may be found within the temple of 

Thy condescension 

Offending Thy majestic gaze. 

Thomas A Kempis. 



72 MARCH 12. 



And Edom came out against \_the children of 
Israef\ with much people and with a strong 
hand. — Num. xx. 20. 

IT is there in some shape always : this good 
among the evil, this power of God among 
the forces of men, this Judah in the midst of 
Asia. But always right on its border lies the 
hostile Edom, watchful, indefatigable, inex- 
orable as the redoubtable old foe of the Jews. 
If progress faiters a moment, the whole mass 
of obstructive ignorance is rolled upon it. If 
faith leaves a loop-hole undefended, the quick 
eye of Atheism sees it from its watch-tower 
and hurls its quick strength there. If goodness 
goes to sleep upon its arms, sleepless wicked- 
ness is across the valley, and the fields which 
it has taken months of toil to sow and ripen 
are swept off in a night. Tell me, is not this 
the impression of the world, of human life, 
that you get, whether you open the history of 
any century or unfold your morning news- 
paper ? The record of a struggling charity is 
crowded by the story of the prison and the 
court. The world waits at the church door to 
catch the worshipper as he comes out. The 
good work of one century relaxes a moment 
for a breathing spell, and the next century 
comes in with its licentiousness or its supersti- 
tion. Always it is the higher life pressed, 
watched, haunted by the lower ; always it is 
Judah with Edom at its gates. No one great 
battle comes to settle it forever : it is an end- 
less fight with an undying enemy. \, 45 . 



MARCH 13. 73 



VOU mean to be true ; but once your truth 
1 sleeps on its guard, and the Edomite is 
over the valley, and the lie is right in the very 
midst of your well-guarded truthfulness. You 
love humility ; but some day your humility 
keeps a careless feast of self-confidence, and 
before you know it the shout of the invader 
pride is in your ears. How evil crowds you. 
You cannot fight it out at once and have it 
done. You go on quietly for days and think 
the enemy is dead. Just when you are safest 
there he is again, more alive than ever. . It is 
the Saviour's word, " Behold, I send you forth 
as sheep among wolves ; " only the sheep and 
the wolf are both within us : Judah, with 
Edom forever at its gate. ,. 46t 47 . 



Looking within myself, I note how thin 

A plank of station, chance, or prosperous fate, 
Doth fence me from the clutching waves of sin ; — 
In my own heart I find the worst man's mate, 
And see not dimly the smooth-hinged gate 

That opes to those abysses 
Where ye grope darkly, — ye who never knew 
On your young hearts love's consecrating dew 
Or felt a mother's kisses, 
Or home's restraining tendrils round you curled ; 
Ah, side by side with heart's-ease in this world 
The fatal night-shade grows and bitter rue ! 

James Russell Lowell. 



74 MARCH 14. 



Who is this that cometh from Edom, with' 
dyed garments from Bozrah ? . . . I that speak 
in righteousness, mighty to save. — Isa. lxiii. 1. 

IT is time for the Saviour when the world 
and the soul have learnt their helplessness 
and sin. ... Is it possible that this one 
that we see coming, this one on whose step, as 
He moves through history, the eyes of all the 
ages are fastened, — is it possible that He is 
the conqueror of the enemy and the Deliverer 
of the Soul ? He comes out of the enemy's 
direction. The whole work of the Saviour 
has relation to and issues from the fact of 
sin. If there had been no sin there would 
have been no Saviour. "He came not to call 
the righteous, but sinners to repentance." He 
comes from the right direction, and He has an 
attractive majesty of movement as He first 
appears. . . . The Saviour comes in the 
strength of righteousness. Righteousness is 
at the bottom of all things, Righteousness 
is thorough. It is the very spirit of unsparing 
truth. Any reform or salvation of which the 
power is righteousness must go down to the 
very root of the trouble, must extenuate and 
cover over nothing ; must expose and convict 
completely, in order that it may completely 
heal. And this is the power of the salvation 
of Christ. It makes no compromise between 
the good and the evil, between Judah and 
Edom. Edom must be destroyed, not parleyed 
with ; sin must be beaten down and not con- 
ciliated ; good must thrive by the defeat and 
not merely by the tolerance of evil. 

I. 5o> 5 1 - 



MARCH 15. 75 



'"PHE Saviour Himself, surely He is never so 
1 dear, never wins so utter and so tender a 
love, as when we see what it has cost Him to 
save us. . . . Not merely He has conquered 
completely and conquered in suffering ; He has 
conquered alone. As any one reads through 
the Gospels he feels how hopeless the attempt 
would be to tell of the loneliness of that life 
which Jesus lived. "I have trodden the wine- 
press alone, and of the people there was none 
with me. I looked and there was none to 
help. Therefore mine own arm brought 
salvation." He had friends, but we always 
feel how far off they stood from the deepest 
centre of His heart. He had disciples, but 
they never came into the inner circles of His 
self-knowledge. He had fellow-workers, but 
they only handed round the broken bread and 
fishes in the miracle, or ordered the guest 
chamber on the Passover night. They never 
came into the deepest work of His life. With 
the mysterious suffering that saved the world 
they had nothing to do. L 53> 54 . 

Wanderers in far countrie 

O think of Him who came, forgot, 

To His own, and they received Him not — 

Jesus of Galilee. 

O all ye who have trod 

The wine-press of affliction, lay 

Your hearts before His heart this day — 

Behold the Christ of God. 

Dinah Muloch Craik. 



76 MARCH 16. 



/ have trodden the wine-press ; I will tread 
them in mine anger and trample them in my fury, 
and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, 
and I will stain all my raiment. — Isa. lxiii. 3. 

BEHOLD, it is no holiday monarch coming 
with a bloodless triumph. It has been no 
pageant of a day, this strife with sin. The 
robes have trailed in the blood. . . . The 
power of God had struggled with the enemy 
and subdued him only in the agony of strife. 
My friends, far be it from me to undertake to 
read all the deep mystery that is in this picture. 
Only this I know is the burden and soul of it 
all, this truth, — that sin is a horrible, strong, 
positive thing, and that not even divinity 
grapples with him and subdues him except in 
strife and pain. . . . This symbol of the blood 
bears this great truth, which has been the 
power of salvation to millions of hearts, and 
which must make this conqueror the Saviour 
of your heart too, the truth that only in self- 
sacrifice and suffering could even God conquer 
sin. Sin is never so dreadful as when we see 
the Saviour with that blood upon His garments. 
. . . The Lord Himself conquers sin. He 
brings out victory in His open hand. From 
His hand we take it by the power of prayer, 
and to Him alone we render thanks here and 
fo^ver. 1.52.53.54. 

Once o'er this painful earth a man did move, 
The Man of griefs, because the Man of Love. 

The wine of Love can be obtained of none, 
Save Him who trod the wine-press all alone. 

R. C. Trench. 



MARCH 17. 77 



THIS conqueror who comes, comes strong, 
— "travelling in the greatness of His 
strength." He has not left His might behind 
Him in the struggle. He is all ready, with the 
same strength with which He conquered, to 
enter in and rule and educate the nation He 
has saved. And so the Saviour has not done 
all when He has forgiven you. By the same 
strength of love and patience which saved you 
upon Calvary, He will come in, if you will let 
Him, and train your saved life into perfectness 
of grace and glory. He has conquered sin, so 
that you need not be its servant any longer. 
Now let Him conquer you by His great love, 
and so let His victory be complete. 1. 55f 56 . 



Surely He cometh, and a thousand voices 
Shout to the saints and to the deaf are dumb ; 

Surely He cometh, and the earth rejoices 
Glad in His coming who hath sworn, I come. 

This hath He done and shall we not adore Him ? 

This shall He do and can we still despair? 
Come let us quickly fling ourselves before Him, 

Cast at His feet the burden of our care, 

Flash from our eyes the glow of our thanksgiving, 
Glad and regretful, confident and calm, 

Then thro' all life and what is after living 
Thrill to the tireless music of a psalm. 

F. W. H. Myers. 



78 MARCH 18. 



\ I 7HEN we think how imperfectly Christ has 
W been welcomed and adopted here — how 
only to the outside of our life He has pene- 
trated, then there opens before us a glorious 
vision of what the city might be in which He 
should be totally received, where He should be 
wholly King. IIL 4 s. 



The earth is the Lord's, the nations are His children, 
Yea, though their birthright they know not, or deny ; 
Rending asunder what God hath willed united. 

O come, Son of Mary, 

Jesu, our Redeemer, 
O come, King triumphant, and reign on earth ! 

Even by the meek, who pray for His appearing, 
Even by the strong, who gird them to the tight, 
The kingdoms of this world shall be made our Christ's 
dominion. 

O come, Son of Mary, 

Jesu, our Redeemer, 
O come, King triumphant, and reign on earth ! 

Then rise Lord, we pray Thee, and heal the nations' 

sickness ! 
Rise Thou, for Whom amid the night we wait ! 
Our eyes are dim with vigils^ our hearts with hope are 
aching. 

O come, Son of Mary, 
Jesu, our Redeemer, 
O come, King triumphant, and reign on earth ! 

Selwyn Image. 



MARCH 19. 79 



Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things 
that are written concerning the Son of man shall he 
accomplished. — Luke xviii. 30. 

THINK how the life of Jesus gets its glory 
and beauty from the way in which it is 
always, from the very first, tending on to the 
thing which it was at last to reach. That 
tendency began at His birth, and it never 
ceased until He was hanging on the cross out- 
side the city gate. Then He had come to 
Jerusalem and it was finished. The angels 
sang about Jerusalem when the shepherds 
heard them. The boy's thoughts were full of 
Jerusalem as He worked in the carpenter's 
shop. Egypt, where they carried the babe to 
get Him out of danger, was on the way to 
Jerusalem, where He was finally to be killed. 
The visit to the temple when He was twelve 
years old, was a nearer glimpse of the Jerusa- 
lem to which He did not then really come, 
though His feet trod its streets, but which He 
then accepted as the only sufficient issue of His 
life. He was baptized in consecration to the 
life-long journey to Jerusalem.. " For this 
cause was I born. For this cause came I into 
the world." "My time is not -yet come." 
Those words, and words like those, dropped 
here and there, along His path, are like foot- 
prints in the road He walked, all pointing to 
Jerusalem. At last He came there. . . . The 
most intense, persistent purpose that the world 
had ever seen, had reached its completion. He 
had come to the Jerusalem of His intention, and 
mankind was saved. IV . 3l8 . 



8o MARCH 20. 



TN all of Christ's associations the same inevi- 
* table mingling of the sad and glad appears. 
There was a little family at Bethany in which 
He often made His home, and the last time He 
left the hospitable door He carried out with 
Him two memories, — the memory of how the 
eyes of Mary had looked up into His face, 
eager with the desire to understand all His 
sacred truth, and the memory of how the same 
eyes had streamed with tears beside her 
brother's tomb. The same voices of the pop- 
ulace at Jerusalem which cried "Hosanna ! " 
cried "Crucify him!" before the week was 
done. One day He saw a poor widow in the 
Temple give a true charity ; but the same 
sensitiveness of soul which made Him find 
pleasure in her simple act laid Him open to the 
distress which only such a soul could feel at 
the ostentatious hypocrisy of the Pharisees. 

Influence, 189, 190. 

Think you to escape 

What mortal man can never be without? 

What saint upon the earth has ever lived apart from 

cross and care ? 
Why, even Jesus Christ our Lord was not even for 

one hour free from His passion's pain. 
" Christ," says He, " needs must suffer, 
Rising from the dead, 
And enter thus upon His glory." 
And how do you ask for another road 
Than this — the Royal Pathway of the Holy Cross? 

Thomas X Kempis. 



MARCH 21. 81 



JESUS had a disciple whom He saw slipping 
more and more away from Him, who He 
saw would some day betray Him with the 
worst ingratitude. And yet 1 think that every 
man whose sad and anxious office it has ever 
been to try to lift a soul which in spite of all 
his struggles has been always sinking deeper 
and deeper into the depths, will bear me 
witness that in the patience and wisdom and 
faithfulness which his Master lavished upon 
Judas Iscariot for years there must have been 
a pathetic pleasure, peculiar and subtle be- 
cause of the growing hopelessness of results 
which compelled each effort to find its satis- 
faction in its own essential nature. . . B And 
both in Peter and in Judas . . . the truth 
appears that it was not for the joy or for the 
sorrow that their society would bring that 
Jesus sought them. Peter and Judas alike 
He sought because they were the sons of 
God ; the pain or pleasure they would give 
Him came afterwards and as an accident. 

Influence, 189. 

A beneficent power, if we obey it, blesses 
and helps us ; but the same power, if we dis- 
obey it, curses and ruins us. That law runs 
everywhere. . . . Was not Judas cursed by 
the same friendship with Jesus that perfected 
John ? Iv . 302 , 305. 

Judas, dost thou betray Me with a kiss ? 
Canst thou find hell about My lips? and miss 
Of life, just at the gates of life and bliss ? 
W 'as ever grief like Mine ? 

George Herbert. 



82 MARCH 22. 



H^HE great Christian sacrament, which em- 
* bodies this idea of which we have been 
treating, the idea of the feeding of the soul 
upon the flesh of Christ, is all filled full of 
memories of the agony in which the flesh was 
offered. What does this mean ? Does it not 
mean this, — that however man longs for his 
God ; however man sees that in the incarnate 
Christ there is the God he needs and whom 
his nature was made to receive ; it is only 
when man sees that Divine Being suffering for 
him, only when he stands by the cross and 
beholds the love in the agony, that his hungry 
nature is able to take the food it needs, that 
is so freely offered ? The flesh must be broken 
before we can take it. This is what Christ 
says, and the histories of thousands of souls 
have borne their witness to it, that it is the 
suffering Saviour, the Saviour in His suffering, 
that saves the soul. n. 250. 

Would I suffer for him that I love? So wilt Thou— so 

wilt Thou ! 
So shall crown Thee the topmost, ineff ablest, uttermost 

Crown — 
And Thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor 

down 
One spot for the creature to stand in ! It is by no breath, 
Turn of eye, wave of hand, that Salvation joins issue 

with death ! 
As thy Love is discovered almighty, almighty be proved 
Thy power, that exists with and for it. of Being beloved ! 

Browning. 



MARCH 23. 83 



OUR Lord's death . . . was the gathering up 
of the mighty love of God in all its mass 
behind the barrier that separated the Father's 
soul from the child's soul, until the barrier 
gave way, and the confined and hampered 
love poured in and flooded the hungry soul of 
" whosoever believeth." It was not done 
without a struggle. The agony, the strong 
cryings and tears, the blood and insult of 
Gethsemane and Calvary, are everlasting 
pictures of what it cost. But it was done. I 
hear the breaking and tearing of the obstacle 
of sin, and the rush of great love set free 
to find the soul, when with the thin voice of 
the dying Conqueror that cry of victory, that 
" It is finished " was spoken so loud that it has 
pierced through history and rung round the 
world. It was the deepest and most original 
and spiritual nature of God, that " love/' 
which " God is " breaking through every 
encumbrance, and declaring itself supreme. 
This is the triumph of the Christhood. 

Oxford Review. 



Thou Who wast Centre of the whole earth on Calvary 
Reign over north and south, east and west. 

Christina Rossetti. 



84 MARCH 24. 



These things have I spoken unto you, that in Me 
ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have 
tribulation; but be of good cheer; I have over- 
come the world. — John xvi. 33. 

IT is as if Jesus walked under a cloud, and 
yet felt always that in the very substance 
of cloud there was suffused and softened light. 
The cloud had light in its darkness, and dark- 
ness in its light ; and so the explanation of it 
all was clear. A sunlight through the cloud 
He felt, and behind the sunlight there must be 
a sun. Behind the bitter circumstances lay a 
law, the blessed law of obedience, which was 
fellowship with God; and behind the law a. 
truth, which was God Himself. 

Under that same cloud of circumstances we 
must walk ; but if there is behind it for us, 
too, that law and that truth which really made 
the life of Jesus, — the law of obedience and 
the truth of sonship, — then for us too, light 
shall come through the cloud, and mingling 
with its darkness, make that new condition in 
which it is best for a man's soul to live, that 
sweet and strong condition in which both joy 
and sorrow may have place, but which is 
greater than either of them, — the condition 
which He called peace. influence, 2 o 4 , 2 o 5 . 

There is no calm like that when storm is done ; 
There is no pleasure keen as pain's release : 
There is no joy that lies so deep as peace, 

No peace so deep as that by struggle won. 

Helen Gray Cone. 



MARCH 25. 85 



Behold I am alive for evermore. — Rev. i. 18. 

T^HIS new life, — the life that has conquered 
death by tasting it, which has enriched 
itself with a before unknown sympathy with 
men whose lives are forever tending towards, 
and at last all going down into the darkness of 
the grave, — this life stretches on and out for- 
ever. It is to know no ending. So long as 
there are men living and dying, so long above 
them and around them there shall be the 
Christ, the God-man, who liveth, and was 
dead, and is alive for evermore. 1. 2I5 . 

. . . ay, that Life and Death 
Of which I wrote " it was " — to me, it is ; 
— Is, here and now : I apprehend naught else. 
Is not God now i' the world His power first made? 
Is not His love at issue still with sin, 
Closed with and cast and conquered, crucified 
Visibly when a wrong is done on earth ? 
Love, wrong, and pain, what see I else around ? 
Yea, and the Resurrection and Uprise 
To the right hand of the throne — what is it beside, 
When such truth, breaking bounds, o'erfloods my soul, 
And, as I saw the sin and death, even so 
See I the need yet transiency of both, 
The good and glory consummated thence ? 

Browning. 



86 MARCH 26. 



A S you sit thinking of man's fragmentari- 

^ ness, his certainty of death, his doubt 

about a future, let this voice come to you, a 

voice clear with personality, and sweet and 

strong with love: "I am He that liveth, and 

was dead ; and am alive for evermore/ ' " He 

that liveth! " And at once your fragment of 

life falls into its place in the eternity of life 

that is bridged by His being. ''He that was 

dead ! " And at once death changes from the 

terrible end of life into a most mysterious but 

no longer terrible experience of life. " He 

that is alive for evermore ! " And not merely 

there is a future beyond the grave, but it is 

inhabited by One who speaks to us, who went 

there by the way that we must go, who sees 

us and can help us as we make our way along, 

and will receive us when we come there. 

1. 216. 

EMMAUSWARD. 

Lord Christ, if Thou art with us and these eyes 
Are holden, while we go sadly and say 
" We hoped it had been He, and now to-day 
Is the third day, and hope within us dies," 
Bear with us, oh our Master, Thou art wise 
And knowest our foolishness ; we do not pray 
" Declare Thyself, since weary grows the way 
And faith's new burden hard upon us lies." 
Nay, choose Thy time ; but ah ! Whoe'er Thou art 
Leave us not ; where have we heard any voice 
Like Thine? Our hearts burn in us as\ve go ; 
Stay with us ; break our bread ; so, for our part 
Ere darkness falls haply we may rejoice, 
Haply when day has been far spent may know. 

Edward Dowden. 



MARCH 27. 87 



Peace I leave with you. — John xiv. 27. 

IF we are really Christ's, then back into the 
very bosom of His Father where Christ is 
hid, there He will carry us. We too shall look 
out and be as calm and as independent as He 
is. The needs of men shall touch us just as 
keenly as they touch Him, but the sneers and 
strifes of men shall pass us by as they pass by 
Him and leave no mark on His unruffled life. 
. . . For us, just as for Him, this will not 
mean a cold and selfish separation from our 
brethren. We shall be infinitely closer to 
their real life when we separate ourself from 
their outside strifes and superficial pride, and 
know and love them truly by knowing and 
loving them in God, 

This is the power and progress of true 
Christianity. It leads us into, it abounds in 
peace. It is a brave, vigorous peace, full of 
life, full of interest and work. It is a peace 
that means thoroughness, that refuses to waste 
its force and time in little superficial tumults 
which come to nothing, while there is so much 
real work to be done, so much real help to be 
given, and such a real life to be lived with 
God. That peace, His peace, may Jesus 
give to us all. It 97< 

Grant us Thy peace, that like a deepening river 
Swells ever outward to a sea of praise. 

O Thou, of peace the only Lord and Giver, 
Grant us Thy peace, O Saviour, all our days ! 

Eliza Scudder, 



88 MARCH 28. 



We see Jesus, who w as made a little lower than 
the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with 
glory and honor ; that He by the grace of God, 
should taste death for every man. 

Forasmuch then as the childi-en are partakers of 
flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part 
of the same ; that through death He might destroy 
him who had the power of death, that is, the devil; 
and deliver them who through fear of death were 
all their lifetime subject to bondage. 

Heb. ii. 9, 14, 15. 

A S Christ drew near to death, He Himself 
** trembled. It was an experience of all His 
creation, but He had never felt it. To His 
humanity, His assumed flesh, it seemed terri- 
ble. Gethsemane bears witness how terrible 
it seemed. But He passed into it for love of us. 
And as He came out from it He declared its 
nature. "It is an experience of life, not an 
end of life. Life goes on through it and comes 
out unharmed. Look at me. I am He that 
liveth, and was dead! " 1.214,215. 

By Thy joy when Thy blessed Humanity was glorified 
by God the Father in Thy Resurrection, 

Good Lord deliver us. 

By Thy joy, when the Love which on the Cross filled 
Thee with intolerable anguish, in the Resurrection 
filled Thee with incomparable honour and Glory, 

Good Lord deliver us. 
Book of Litanies. Neale. 



MARCH 29. 89 



And if I go and prepare a place for you, I ivill 
come again and receive you unto Myself ; that where 
I am, there ye may be also. — John xiv. 3. 

I AM sure that in the Bible something is prom- 
ised, some close, perpetual association of 
the souls of Christ's redeemed to Him, which, 
over and above the likeness which is to come 
between their souls and His, shall correspond 
in some celestial way to that close, visible, 
tangible propinquity with which they sat by 
one another at the table in the upper chamber. 
The "seeing His face," the "walking with 
Him in white," in heaven, are not wholly fig- 
ures. What they mean those know to-day 
who through the lapsing years have gone from 
us one by one to be with Christ. 

Take me away, and in the lowest deep 

There let me be, 
And there in hope the lone night-watches keep, 

Told out for me. 
There, motionless and happy in my pain, 

Lone, not forlorn, — 
There will I sing my sad perpetual strain 

Until the morn. 
There will I sing, and soothe my stricken breast, 

Which ne'er can cease 
To throb and pine and languish, till possest 

Of its Sole Peace. 
There will I sing my absent Lord and Love : 

Take me away, 
That sooner I may rise, and go above, 
And see Him in the truth of everlasting day. 

John Henry Newman. 



go MARCH 30. 



As the Father knoweth Me, even so know I the 
Father, — John x. 15. 

"^"THE Father knoweth me." That means, 
1 "God has a will for every act of 
mine." What then can " I know the Father," 
mean, except " In every act of mine I do the 
Father's will." Obedience becomes the organ 
and utterance, nay becomes the substance and 
reality of knowledge on the side of him who is 
aware that in this more special sense God 
knows him. I think of Jesus on that day 
when He called Lazarus back from the dead 
to life. He travels all the way from Galilee 
to Bethany. At last He stands beside the 
tomb. His soul is full of sympathy. The 
dreadfulness of death oppresses Him. Then 
He becomes aware of a will of God. . . . 
Behold ! He lifts His head. His face shines 
like the sun ! The gloom is gone ! He 
stretches out His hand ! He opens His lips 
with the cry of life ! "Lazarus, come forth ! " 
"And he that was dead came forth, bound 
hand and foot with grave clothes ! " 

God's will and Christ's obedience! Here 
then there is the perfect mutualness, the abso- 
lute understanding and harmony of the Father 
and the Son. If it were not the morning of 
the miracle at Bethany, but the awful morning 
of the cross, it would be still the same. 
"Father, into Thy hands I commend My 
spirit." There, in those words of completed 
obedience, the mutual knowledge of Father and 
Son is perfect, and being blends with being ; 
the veil and barrier of the human flesh no 
longer hangs between. iv. 290,291. 



MARCH 31. 91 



'"FHERE is a class of passages in the Bible 
which to me seem mysteriously beauti- 
ful, and which appear to rest the peace of 
the human soul upon the mere fact of the 
existence of the larger life of God. Such is 
that verse of the forty-sixth Psalm, "Be still, 
and know that I am God." " Thou shalt 
know that I, the Lord, am," is the noble 
promise that comes again and again, full of 
reassurance. And when God's people, tram- 
pled, bruised, broken, trodden in the dust in 
Egypt, asked by Moses for the name of the 
God who had promised them His deliverance, 
it was a mere assertion of the awful and 
supreme existence that was given in reply: 
" I AM hath sent me." It is because God is, 
that man is bidden to be at peace. L I03> I04 . 

It fortifies my soul to know 
That, though I perish, Truth is so : 
That, howsoe'er I stray and range, 
Whate'er I do, Thou dost not change. 
1 steadier step when I recall 
That, if 1 slip, Thou dost not fall. 

Arthur Hugh Clough. 



92 APRIL i. 

JUST as the children's lives set themselves 
into the life of their father which seems 
to them really eternal ; just as the leaves 
coming and going, growing and dropping, find 
their reason and consistency in the long, un- 
changing life of the tree on which they grow ; 
so our lives find their place in this long, un- 
changing life of Christ, and lose the vexa- 
tion of their own ever-shifting pasts and 
futures in the perpetual present of His being. 
It is the thought of an eternal God that really 
gives consistency to the fragmentary lives of 
men, the fragmentary history of the world. 
A Christ that liveth redeems and rescues into 
His eternity the broken, temporary lives and 
works of His disciples. i. 2I3 . 

Hearken ! Hearken ! 

God speaketh in thy soul, 

Saying, O thou that movest 

With feeble steps across this earth of mine, 

To break beside the fount thy golden bowl, 

And spill its purple wine, 

Look up to heaven and see how like a scroll 

My right hand hath thy immortality 

In an eternal grasping. 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 



APRIL 2. 93 

The tasks, the joys of earth the same in heaven will be ; 
Only the little brook has widened to a sea. 

R. C. Trench. 

LET this be the glory that gathers around 
your daily experiences, my Christian 
friends. Poor, weak, homely, commonplace 
as they may be, they are preparing you for 
something far greater and more perfect than 
themselves. Be true in them, learn them down 
to their depths and they shall open heaven to 
you some day. The powers and affection 
which are training in your family, your busi- 
ness, and your church are to find their eternal 
occupation along the streets of gold. "Well 
done, good and faithful servant, thou hast been 
faithful over a few things. I will make thee 
ruler over many things. Enter thou into the 
glory of thy Lord.-" And so the long life of 
heaven shall be bound to the short life of earth 
forever. v. 304, 305. 

Courage in all the worlds is the same cour- 
age. Truth before the throne of God is the 
same thing as when neighbor talks with neigh- 
bor on the street. Mercy will grow tenderer 
and finer, but will be the old blessed balm of 
life in the fields of eternity that it was in your 
workshop and your home. Unselfishness will 
expand and richen till it enfolds the life like 
sunshine, but it will be the same self-denial, 
opening into a richer self-indulgence, which 
it was when it first stole in with one thin 
sunbeam on the startled soul. There is no 
new world of virtues in any heaven or in any 
heavenly experience of life. v. 13. 



94 APRIL 3. 

T^vROP the old remnants of a past life into 
•■— ' the ever-fruitfu! soil, and all the possi- 
bilities of new life open. The spring-time 
finds last summer's roots still remaining in the 
ground, and quickens them to life again, and 
multiplies them into a richer summer still. In- 
genious Nature finds a germ wherever it is 
dropped; but without the germ she will do 
nothing. Mere spontaneity she disowns and 
disproves more and more. Think what a place 
the world would be to live in if this were not 
so, if nature were a wizard, fitful and whim- 
sical, doing her wonders in no sequel or con- 
nection with each other, with her pets and 
favorites, instead of being, as she is, a mother 
with her great, wise, reasonable laws of the 
house which press alike on all her children, 
which no one of the children thinks of seeing 
changed or violated. That is what makes the 
world such a good home for man to dwell in, 

his school-room and his home at once. 

11. 131, 132. 

April cold with dropping rain, 
Willows and lilacs brings again 
The whistle of returning birds, 
And trumpet-lowing of the herds ; 
The scarlet maple-keys betray 
What potent blood hath modest May ; 
What fiery force the earth renews, 
The wealth of forms, the flush of hues ; 
What Joy in rosy waves outpoured, 
Flows from the heart of Love, the Lord. 

Emerson. 



APRIL 4. 95 

Choose you this day whom ye will serve. 
The Lord our God will we serve and His voice 
will we obey. — Josh. xxiv. 15, 24. 

^FHERE is a noble economy of the deepest 
1 life. There is a watchful reserve which 
keeps guard over the powers of profound anx- 
iety and devqted work, and refuses to give 
them away to any first applicant who comes 
-and asks. Wealth rolls up to the door and 
says, "Give me your great anxiety ;" and 
you look up and answer, "No, not for you; 
here is a little half-indifferent desire which is 
all that you deserve. " Popularity comes and 
says, "Work with all your might for me;" 
and you reply, "No; you are not of conse- 
quence enough for that. Here is a small 
fragment of energy which you may have, if 
you want it; but that is all." Even knowl- 
edge comes and says, " Give your whole soul 
to me;" and you must answer once more, 
"No; great, good, beautiful as you are, you 
are not worthy of a man's whole soul." . . . 
But then at last comes One greater than them 
all, — God comes with His supreme demand 
for goodness and for character, and then you 
open the doors of your whole nature and bid 
your holiest and profoundest devotion to come 
trooping forth. Now you rejoice that you kept 
something which you would not give to any 
lesser lord. v. 248 , 249 , 



96 APRIL 5. 

TF we can live in Christ and have His life in 
A us, shall not the spiritual balance and pro- 
portion which were His become ours too ? If 
He were really our Master and our Saviour, 
could it be that we could get so eager and 
excited over little things ? If we were His, 
could we possibly be wretched over the losing 
of a little money which we do not need, or be 
exalted at the sound of a little praise which 
we know that we only half deserve and that 
the praisers only half intend ? A moment's 
disappointment, a moment's gratification, and 
then the ocean would be calm again and quite 
forgetful of the ripple which disturbed its 
bosom. v. 251. 

He who loves Jesus and loves truth, 

The man of really inner life, 

From unchecked passions free, 

Can turn himself with ease to God, 

And lift himself above himself in thought, 

And rest in peace, enjoying Him. 

The man who tastes life as it really is, 
Not as men talk of it, 
Not as men value it, 
He is the true philosopher, 
Taught of God, and not of men, 
The man who learns to walk the inward road, 
Weighing outward life as little. 
Asking for no set places, wanting no fixed times 
To pray his holy prayers, 
He soon collects his thoughts, 
Because he never dissipates his life 
Upon the outward world. 

Thomas a Kempis. 



APRIL 6. 97 



The joy of the Lord is your strength, 

Neh. viii. 10. 

^HE denial, the trial, the scourging, the 
crucifixion, follow fast. Yet even in the 
midst of their horror there is room for some 
momentary gleams of joy. The wavering 
of Pilate ; the cries of a few sympathetic 
voices among the hooting mobs as He passed 
through the street ; the group of friends at the 
foot of the cross ; and then that great joy 
which must have fallen into His spirit when 
from the other cross there came a cry of faith 
and hope ; at last the utter satisfaction which 
fills His soul as He exclaims, " It is finished/' 
— all of these come in to show that the very 
agony of agonies was charged with the divine 
capacity of joy. influence. 204 . 

In the Cross is safety, 
In the Cross is life, 
In the Cross protection from our foes, 
In the Cross is sweetness 
Poured on us from above ; 
In the Cross is spiritual joy, 
In the Cross the sum of virtues ; 
In the Cross is holiness in perfect beauty. 

Thomas a Kempis. 



98 APRIL 7. 

The sower soweth the word . . . and these are 
they which are sown on good ground ; such as hear 
the word, and receive it, and bring forth fruit, 
some thirty fold, some sixty, and some an hundred. 

Mark iv. 14, 20. 

TF one gives me a diamond to carry across 
^ the sea, I may estimate its value and 
know just how much poorer I shall be and the 
world will be if I let it drop into the water 
and it sinks to the bottom. But if one gives 
me a seed of some new fruit to bring to 
this new land, I look at it with awe. It is 
mysteriously valuable. I cannot tell what 
preciousness is in it. Harvests on harvests, 
food for whole generations, are shut up in its 
little bulk. There always must be a differ- 
ence as to the essential value set on truth, 
between him who thinks that truth is final 
and him who thinks that truth is germinal, 
between him who thinks it a diamond and him 
who thinks it a seed. ... In the name of all 
you hope to w know, cling close to what you 
know already. ... It is not good for any 
man to let the vastness of unknown truth 
make him disparage the little that he knows. 
It is good for him to count his little precious 
because it is of the same kind with, and may 
introduce him to, the greater after which he 
aspires. n. I39 . 



APRIL 8. 99 



THE devils of discontent, despair, selfish- 
ness, sensuality, how they are scattered 
before that voice, really heard, of the risen 
and everlasting Christ ! He stands before the 
door of His tomb and speaks, and these dark 
forms that have enchained the souls and fet- 
tered the activities of men fall on their faces, 
like the Roman soldiers, who in the gray dawn 
of the morning saw Him come forth from the 
tomb of the Arimathean, and trembled with 
fright, and knew that their day was over, and 
that the prisoner they thought was dead was 
indeed too strong for them to keep. L 2l6t 2I7 . 

Good, to forgive Wander at will, 
Best, to forget ! Day after day, — 

Living, we fret, Wander away, 

Dying we live. Wandering still. 

Fretless and free, Soul that canst soar ! 
Soul, clap thy pinion ! Body may slumber : 

Earth have dominion Body shall cumber 

Body, o'er thee ! Soul-flight no more. 

Waft of soul's wing ! 

What lies above? 

Sunshine and Love, 
Sky-blue and Spring ! 
Body hides where? 

Ferns of all feather, 

Mosses and heather, 
Yours be the care! 

Browning- 



ioo APRIL 9. 



THE whole position of duty is elevated by 
the thought, the knowledge of immor- 
tality. Duty is a vast power, and needs a 
vast world to work in. . . . Duty is the one 
thing on earth that is so vital that it can go 
through death and come to glory. Duty is the 
one seed that has such life in it that it can 
lie as long as God will in the mummy hand of 
death, and yet be ready any moment to start 
into new growth in the new soil where He 
shall set it. L 223 , 224 . 



Stern Daughter of the Voice of God ! 

O Duty ! it that name thou love 

Who art a light to guide, a rod 

To check the erring, and reprove ; 

Thou, who art victory and law 

When empty terrors overawe ; 

From vain temptations dost set free ; 

And calm'st the weary strife of frail humanity ! 

Stern Lawgiver ! yet thou dost wear 
The Godhead's most benignant grace ; 
Nor know we anything so fair 
As is the smile upon thy face : 
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds 
And fragrance in thy footing treads ; 
Thou dost preserve the Stars from wreng ; 
And the most ancient Heavens, through Thee, are 
fresh and strong. 

Wordsworth. 



APRIL 10. ioi 



I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from 
whence cometh my help. — Ps. cxxi. i. 

THE fear of pain, the fear of disgrace, the fear 
of discomfort, and the shame that comes 
with the loftiest companionship, — we may 
have to appeal to them all for support in the 
hours, which come so often in our lives, when 
we are very weak. But, after all, the appeal 
to these helpers is not the final cry of the soul. 
They are like the bits of wood that the drown- 
ing sailor clutches when he must have some- 
thing at the instant or he perishes. They are 
not the solid shore on which at last he drops 
his tired feet and knows that he is safe. Or 
rather, perhaps, the man who trusts them is 
like a dweller in some valley down which a 
freshet pours, who drives the stakes of his 
imperilled tent deeper into the ground ; not 
like one who leaves the valley altogether and 
escapes to the mountain where the freshet 
never comes. . . . Not until a man has laid 
hold "behind and above everything else " 
upon the absolute assurance that the right is 
right and that the God of righteousness will 
give His strength to any feeblest will in all His 
universe which tries to do the right in simple 
unquestioning consecration ; not until he has 
thus appealed to duty and to the dear God of 
whose voice she is the " stern daughter ;" not 
till then has he summoned to his aid the final 
perfect help; only then has he really looked 
up to the hills, n. 275 , 2?6 . 



102 APRIL ii. 



God dwelleth in a light far out of human ken — 
Become thyself that light and thou shalt see Him then. 

Angelus Silesius. 



IT is a blessed thing that in all times, and 
never more richly than in the Reformation 
days, there have always been other men to 
whom religion has not presented itself as a 
system of doctrine, but as an elemental life in 
which the soul of man came into very direct 
and close communion with the soul of God. It 
is the mystics of every age who have done 
most to blend the love of truth and the love of 
man within the love of God, and so to keep 
alive or to restore a healthy tolerance. In- 
deed, the mystic spirit has been almost like a 
deep and quiet pool in which tolerance, when 
it has been growing old and weak, has been 
again and again sent back to bathe itself and 
to renew its youth and vigor. The German 
mystics of the fourteenth century made ready 
for the great enfranchisement of the fifteenth. 
The English Platonists, who had the mystic 
spirit very strongly, became almost the re- 
creators of tolerance in the English Church. 
The mysticism of to-day gives great hope for 
the earnest freedom of the future. 

• Tolerance, 35, 36. 



APRIL 12. 103 



THE little lives which do in little ways that 
which the life of Jesus does completely 
the noble characters of which we think we 
have the right to say that they are the lights 
of human history, . . . they reveal and they 
inspire. . . . They faintly catch the feeble 
reflection of His life who is the true Light of 
the World, the real illumination and inspira- 
tion of humanity. v. 5t 6 . 

" Faces, faces, faces of the streaming marching surge, 
Streaming on the weary road, toward the awful 
steep, 
Whence your glow and glory, as ye set to that sharp 
verge, 
Faces lit as sunlit stars, shining as ye sweep? " 



Lo, the Light ! (they answer) O the pure, the pulsing 
Light, 
Heating like a heart of life, like a heart of love, 
Soaring, searching, filling all the breadth and depth and 
height, 
Welling, whelming with its peace worlds below, above I 

" O my soul, how art thou to that living Splendor blind, 
Sick with thy desire to see even as these men see ! — 
Yet to look upon them is to know that God hath 
shined : 
Faces lit as sunlit stars, be all my light to me ! " 

Helen Gray Cone. 



104 APRIL 13. 



TTERE is the power of true self-sacrifice; 

here is the secret which takes out of it 
all the bitterness and brutality. Always it is 
the giving up of a symbol that you may have 
the reality. In the great sacrifice of all, Christ 
lays down His life, but it is that He may take 
it again. Do you think that Christ did not 
care for life and all that makes life beautiful to 
us ? Surely He did, but He cared more for that 
which they represent, — the living purely, the 
doing of His Father's will, and the serving of 
His brethren. That was why He was able to 
do without the things which seem to be abso- 
lutely essential to our lives; because He was 
so much more full than we are of the beauty 
and glory of the life with God. : ::: ;:: 



Could we but crush that ever-craving lust 

For bliss, which kills all bliss, and live our life, 

Our barren unit life, to find again 

A thousand lives in those for whom we die ! 

So were we men and women, and should hold 

Our rightful rank in God's great universe, 

Wherein, in heaven and earth, by will or nature, 

Naught lives for self. 

Charles Kingsley. 



APRIL 14. 105 

THE onward reach, the struggle to an ap- 
prehended purpose, the straight clear 
line right from His own self-knowledge to His 
work, was perfect in the Lord. "For this 
cause was I born," He cried. His life pierced 
like an arrow through the cloud of aimless 
lives, never for a moment losing its direction, 
hurrying on with a haste and assurance which 
were divine. . . . We revel in the making 
of specialists. Perhaps we overdo it, but no 
thinking man dreams of saying that the thing 
itself is wrong. This movement of a man's 
whole life along some clearly apprehended line 
of self-development and self-accomplishment, 
this reaching of a life out forward to its own 
best attainment, no man can live as a man 
ought to live without it. The men who have 
no purpose are good for nothing. They lie in 
the world like mere pulpy masses, giving it no 
strength or interest or character. n. 

Cleave thou the waves that weltering to and fro 
Surge multitudinous. The eternal Powers 
Of sun, moon, stars, the air, the hurrying hours, 

The winged winds, the still dissolving show 

Of clouds in calm or storm, forever flow 
Above thee ; while the abysmal sea devours 
The untold dead insatiate, where it lowers 

O'er glooms unfathom'd, limitless, below. 

No longer on the golden-fretted sands, 
Where many a shallow tide abortive chafes, 

Mayst thou delay ; life onward sweeping blends 
With far-off heaven : the dauntless one who braves 

The perilous flood with calm unswerving hands, 
The elements sustain : cleave thou the waves. 

Mathilde Blind. 



io6 APRIL 15. 



T ET us stand in the country he has saved 
and which is to be his grave and monu- 
ment, and say of Abraham Lincoln what he 
said of the soldiers who had died at Gettys- 
burg. He stood there with their graves before 
him, and these are the words he said: 



" We cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we can- 
not hallow this ground. The brave men who struggled 
here have consecrated it far beyond our power to add or 
detract. The world will little note, nor long remember 
what we say here, but it can never forget what they 
did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated 
to the unfinished work which they who fought here 
have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us 
to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before 
us, that from these honored dead we take increased de- 
votion to that cause for which they gave the last full 
measure of devotion ; that we here highly resolve that 
these dead shall not have died in vain ; and this nation, 
under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that 
government of the people, by the people, and for the 
people shall not perish from the earth." 

May God make us worthy of the memory of 

Abraham Lincoln. Sermon on Abraham Lincoln. 



APRIL 16. 107 



IT seems to me that this sight of the super- 
ficialness of our own judgments of others, 
the way in which we have often pronounced 
solemn-sounding verdicts which really meant 
nothing, and uttered cheap ridicule which we 
should have despised the man if he had minded, 
gives us very often a startling sense of what a 
superficial thing this criticism is that comes to 
us from our brethren of which we make so 
much and to which we are always trimming 
our action. 



O Lord of bliss, 

Remember this : 
How man's mind is like the moon ; 
Is variable, 
Frail and unstable, 
At morning, night, and noon. 
Though he, unkind, 
Have not in mind 
What Ye for him have done, 
Yet have compassion, 
For our salvation 
Forsake not man so soon. 
A while him spare, 
He shall prepare 
Himself to You anon ; 
With heart and mind, 
Loving and kind, 
To serve but You alone ! 



io8 APRIL 17. 

THE great impression of the life of Jesus, as 
it seems to me, must always be of the 
subordinate importance of those things in 
which only the aesthetic nature finds its pleas- 
ure. There is no condemnation of them in 
that wise deep life. But the fact always must 
remain that the wisest deepest life that was 
ever lived left them on one side, was satisfied 
without them. And His religion, while it has 
developed and delighted in their culture, has 
always kept two strong habits with reference to 
art which showed that in it was still the spirit 
of its Master. It has always been restless 
under the sway of any art that did not breathe 
with spiritual and moral purpose. Never has 
Christian art reached the pure asstheticism of 
the classics. And in its more earnest moods, 
in its reformations, in its puritanisms, it has 
always stood ready to sacrifice the choicest 
works of artistic beauty for the restoration or 
preservation of the simple majesty of right- 
eousness, the purity of truth, or the glory of 

vjOQ. Influence, 200, 201. 

If Greece must be 
A wreck, yet shall its fragments reassemble, 
And build themselves again impregnably 

In a diviner clime, 
To Amphionic music, on some Cape sublime, 
Which frowns above the idle foam of Time. 

Shelley. 



APRIL 18. 109 



UNDER one fatherhood the whole world 
becomes sacred. The old distinctions 
of useful and useless knowledge will not hold. 
The responsibility of each man for the work- 
ing of his intellect must be acknowledged. 
The sin of mental carelessness or wilfulness 
must take its place among the sins against 
which men struggle and for which they re- 
pent. The application of moral standards to 
history, to art, and to pure letters must be 
learned and taught. The isolation of the artis- 
tic impulse from all moral judgments and pur- 
poses must be restrained and remedied. The 
whole thought of art must be enlarged and 
mellowed till it develops a relation to the spir- 
itual and moral natures as well as to the 
senses of mankind. It will lose, perhaps, the 
purity and simplicity which has belonged to 
the idea of art in classic and unchristian times, 
but it will become more and more a part of the 
general culture of human life. That is the 
change which has come between the Venus of 
Milo and the Moses of Michael Angelo ; be- 
tween the Iliad and Paradise Lost ; between 
the Idyls of Theocritus and the best modern 
novel. Mere simplicity of method and effect 
has given place to harmony of method and 
effect, littleness to largeness, fastidiousness 
to sympathy, and the Christian world has 
really learned more and more to believe what 
the Christian poet sang, that 

He who feels contempt 
For any living thing, hath faculties 
That he hath never used : and Thought with him 
Is in its infancy. 

Influence, 267, 268. 



no APRIL 19. 

Paul said, I would to God that not only thou, 
but also all that hear me this day, were both almost 
and altogether such as I ain, except these bonds. 

Acts xxvi. 29. 

T^HIS must always be the first joy of any 
* really good life, its first joy and its first 
anxiety at once, — the desire that others 
should enter into it. Indeed here is the test 
of a man's life. Can you say, " I wish you 
were like me" ? Can you take your pur- 
poses and standards of living, and quietly, 
deliberately wish for all those who are dearest 
to you that they should be their purposes and 
standards too ? If you are a true Christian 
you can. If you are trying to serve Christ, 
however imperfect be your service, still you 
can say to your child, your friend, "I wish 
that you were with me where I am, on this 
good road of serving Christ, though far be- 
yond me _ in it." ... . It is not good for a man 
to be living any life which he would not desire 
to see made perfect and universal through the 
world. Paul says, "Be what I am;" but 
Dives cries out of the fire where he lies, 
" Oh, send and warn my seven brethren lest 
they come where I am!" . . . Oh, test your 
lives thus ! Do not consent to be anything 
which you would not ask the soul that is 
dearest to you to be. Be nothing which you 
would not wish all the world to be ! 

I. 304, 3°5- 



APRIL 20. in 



DEATH did not close Christ's being, but it 
was only an experience which that being 
underwent. That spiritual existence which 
had been going on forever, on which the short 
existences of men had been strung into con- 
sistency, now came and submitted itself to 
that which men had always been submitting 
to. And lo ! instead of being what men had 
feared it was, what men had hardly dared to 
hope that it was not, the putting out of life, it 
was seen to be only the changing of the cir- 
cumstances of life without any real power 
over the real principle of life ; any more 
power than the cloud has over the sun that 
it obscures- . . . That was the wonder of 
Christ's death. L 2I4 . 

I lift mine eyes to see : earth vanisheth. 

I lift up wistful eyes and bow my knee : 
Trembling, bowed down, and face to face with Death, 

I lift mine eyes to see. 

Lo, what I see is Death that shadows me : 
Yet, while I, seeing, draw a shuddering breath, 
Death like a mist grows rare perceptibly. 

Beyond the darkness, light, beyond the scathe 
Healing, beyond the Cross, a palm-branch tree, 

Beyond Death Life, on evidence of faith : 
I lift mine eyes to see. 

Christina Rossetti. 



112 APRIL 21. 



WHAT shall we make of some man rich in 
attainments and in generous desires, 
well educated, well behaved, who has trained 
himself to be a light and help to other men, 
and who, now that his training is complete, 
stands in the midst of his fellow-men com- 
pletely dark and helpless ? . . . These men 
are unlighted candles ; they are the spirit of 
man, elaborated, cultivated, finished to its very 
finest, but lacking the last touch of God. As 
dark as a row of silver lamps, all chased and 
wrought with wondrous skill, all filled with 
rarest oil, but all untouched with fire, — so 
dark in this world is a long row of cultivated 
men, set up along the corridors of some age of 
history, around the halls of some wise univer- 
sity, or in the pulpits of some stately church, 
to whom there has come no fire of devotion, 
who stand in awe and reverence before no 
wisdom greater than their own. n . g> io . 

The world's philosophers and they that taste the flesh 

fail in Thy philosophy. 
There is many a vanity ; 
There men find death. 



Wide, wide apart the savour of Creator and created, 

As of eternity and time. 

A candle and the uncreated beam. 

O blaze that shines forever. 

High above all the fires of the earth, 

Lighten in flashes from above, 

Finding a way into the secret chambers of my heart. 

Make pure, 

Make glad, 

Make clear, make quick my spirit and its powers. 

Thomas a Kempis. 



APRIL 22. 113 



T^O him (who believes in immortality) death 
* is a jar, a break, a deep mysterious 
change, but not the end of life. . . . See how 
free it makes him. How it breaks his tyran- 
nies ! He can undertake works of self-culture, 
or the development of truth, far, far too vast 
for the earthly life of any Methuselah to finish, 
and yet smile calmly and work on when men 
tell him that he will die before his work is 
done. Die ! Shall not the sculptor sleep a 
hundred times before the statue he begins to- 
day is finished, and wake a hundred times 
more ready for his work, bringing with a hun- 
dred new mornings to his work the strength 
and the visions that have come to him in his 
slumber ? j. 22I . 

That low man seeks a little thing to do, 

Sees it and does it : 
This high man, with a great thing to pursue, 

Dies ere he knows it. 
That low man goes on adding one to one, 

His hundred's soon hit : 
This high man, aiming at a million, 

Misses an unit. 
That, has the world here — should he need the next, 

Let the world mind him ! 

This, throws himself on God, and unperplext, 

Seeking, shall find Him. 

Robert Browning. 



ii4 APRIL 23. 

/ will bring the third part through the fire, and 
will refine them as silver is refined, and will try 
them as gold is tried ; they shall call on My Name, 
and I will hear them : I will say, It is My people : 
and they shall say, The Lord is my God. — Zech. 
xiii. 9. 

T TE has had little experience of God who has 
not often felt how sometimes, with a 
question still unanswered, a deep doubt in 
the soul unsolved, the Father will fold about 
His doubting child a sense of Himself so deep, 
so true, so self-witnessing, that the child is 
content to carry his unanswered question be- 
cause of the unanswerable assurance of His 
Father which he has received. 1 TO 



We are led to believe a lie 

When we see with not through the eye, 

Which was born in a night to perish in a night 

When the soul slept in beams of light. 

God appears and God is light 

To those poor souls who dwell in night : 

But doth a human form display 

To those who dwell in realms of day. . 

Williaai Blake. 



APRIL 24. 115 

Great is our Lord, and of great power : His 
understanding is infinite. — Ps. cxlvii. 5 . 

When Thy word goeth forth, it giveth light and 
understanding. — Ps. cxix. 2. 

THERE are some men whose minds are 
wholly sceptical of Christian truth, who 
yet allow themselves a sort of religion on the 
weaker side. They let their emotions be re- 
ligious, while they keep their minds in the 
hard clear air of disbelief ; the heart may wor- 
ship, while the brain denies. I will not stop 
to ask the meaning of this last strange condi- 
tion, interesting as the study might be made. I 
only want you all to feel how thoroughly Chris- 
tianity is bound to reject indignantly this whole 
treatment of itself. Just think how the great 
masters of religion would receive it ! Think 
of David and his cry — "Thy testimonies are 
wonderful. I have more understanding than 
my teachers, for Thy testimonies are my 
study." Think of Paul — "O the depth of 
the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge 
of God." Think of Augustine, Luther, Cal- 
vin, Milton, Edwards, and a hundred more, the 
men whose minds have found their loftiest 
inspiration in religion, how would they have 
received this quiet and contemptuous relega- 
tion of the most stupendous subjects of human 
thought to the region of silly sentiment ? 
They were men who loved the Lord their 
God with all their minds. in. 38, 39 . 



n6 APRIL 25. 



T WOULD present true sainthood to you as 

the strong chain of God's presence in 
humanity running down through all history, 
and making of it a unity, giving it a large and 
massive strength able to bear great things and 
to do great things ...too. This unity which the 
line of sainthood gives to history is the great 
point that shows its strength. L 122 . 



Thy saints, O Lord, who now rejoice with Thee, high 
in the kingdom of the sky, 

Waited the coming of Thy glory all their lives, trust- 
fully, very patiently. 

That they believed in, I believe in too ; 

That they hoped for, I hope too ; 

Whither they came, 

Thither I trust that through thy grace I shall come too. 

Till then I walk in faith, strengthened by the pattern 
set by them. 



Rejoice, ye humble, 
And exult, ye poor; 
God's kingdom yours, 
If ye but walk in truth. 

Thomas X Kempis. 



APRIL 26. 117 



A I IE have full tolerance for the Buddhist and 
W the Mohammedan ; less for the Quaker 
and the Congregationalist ; least of all for the 
man of our own Church, but of another 
" school of thought" from ours. 



So far from earnest personal conviction and 
generous tolerance being incompatible with one 
another, the two are necessary each to each. 
"It is the natural feeling of all of us," said 
Frederick Maurice in one of those utterances 
of his which at first sound like paradoxes, and 
by and by seem to be axioms, — "it is the 
natural feeling of all of us that charity is 
founded upon the uncertainty of truth. I be- 
lieve it is founded on the certainty of truth. " 

Tolerance, 27, 9. 

To veer, how vain ! On, onward strain, 
Brave barks ! In light, in darkness too, 

Through winds and tides one compass guides — 
To that, and your own selves, be true. 

But O blithe breeze ! and O great seas, 
Though ne'er, that earliest parting past, 

On your wide-plain they join again, 
Together lead them home at last. 

One port, methought, alike they sought, 
One purpose hold where'er they fare, — 

O bounding breeze, O rushing seas ! 
At last, at last, unite them there. 

Arthur Hugh Clough. 



n8 APRIL 27. 

If we be dead with Him, we shall also live with 
Him : if we suffer, we shall also reign with Him. 

II. Tim. ii. 11, 12. 

CHRIST was humiliated into our condition 
that we might be exalted unto His. 
Christ was crucified with man that man might 
rejoice in being crucified with Christ. Both 
the depth to which He went to seek man and 
the height up to which He would carry man, 
were set forth in the cross. Alas for him who, 
. . . looking at the crucifixion, does not see 
both of these, does not learn at once how low 
his Saviour went to find him, and how high he 
may go if he will make his Saviour's life his 
own ! ,. I95 . 

O mine enemy, 
Rejoice not over me ! 

Jesus waiteth to be gracious : 
I will yet arise, 
Mounting free and far 
Past sun and star, 

To a house prepared and spacious 
In the skies. 

Lord, for Thine own sake 
Kindle my heart and break ; 

Make mine anguish efficacious 
Wedded to Thine own : 
Be not Thy dear pain, 
Thy love in vain, 

Thou who waitest to be gracious 
On Thy Throne. 

Christina Rossetti 



APRIL 28 119 



IT seems to me a wonderful thing that the 
supremely rich human nature of Jesus 
never for an instant turned with self-indul- 
gence in on its own richness, or was beguiled by 
that besetting danger of all opulent souls, the 
wish, in the deepest sense, just to enjoy him- 
self. How fascinating that desire is. How it 
keeps many and many of the most abundant 
natures in the world from usefulness. Just 
to handle over and over their hidden treasures, 
and with a spiritual miserliness to think their 
thought for the pure joy of thinking, and turn 
emotion into the soft atmosphere of a life of 
gardened selfishness. Not one instant of that 
in Jesus. All the vast richness of His human 
nature only meant for Him more power to 
utter God to man. n. 16. 

I built my soul a lordly pleasure-house, 

Wherein at ease for aye to dwell. 
I said, " O Soul, make merry and carouse, 

Dear soul, for all is well." 



Full oft the riddle of the painful earth 
Flashed through her as she sat alone, 

Yet not the less held she her solemn mirth, 
And intellectual throne. 

And so she throve and prospered : so three years 
She prospered : on the fourth she fell, 

Like Herod, when the shout was in his ears, 
Struck through with pangs of hell. 

Tennyson. 



120 APRIL 29. 

THE NEW BIRTH. 
'Tis a new life ; — thoughts move not as they did, 
With slow uncertain steps across my mind ; 
In thronging haste fast pressing on they bid 
The portals open to the viewless wind, 
That comes not save when in the dust is laid 
The crown of pride that gilds each mortal brow, 
And from before man's vision melting fade 
The heavens and earth ; — their walls are falling now. 
Fast crowding on, each thought asks utterance- strong ; 
Storm-lifted waves swift rushing to the shore, 
On from the sea they send their shouts along, 
Back through the cave-worn rocks their thunders roar ; 
And I, a child of God, by Christ made free, 
Start from death's slumbers to eternity. 

Jones Very. 

\\ THEN a man, strong in the conviction of 

W immortality, really counts himself a 

stranger and a pilgrim among the multitudes 

who know no home, no world but this, then 

he is free among them ; free from the worldly 

tyrannies that bind them ; free from their 

temptations to be cowardly and mean. The 

wall of death, beyond which they never look, 

is to him only a mountain that can be crossed, 

from whose top he shall see eternity, where 

he belongs. . . . What is there in scorn or 

criticism, that dies the day it is born, that can 

terrify, however it may pain, the man who is 

to live forever ? He is free. He has entered 

into the glorious liberty of the children of God. 

1. 222, 223. 



APRIL 30. T2i 

We do not present our supplications before Thee 
for our righteousness, but for Thy great mercies. 
O Lord, hear ; O Lord, forgive ; O Lord, hearken 
and do. — Dan. ix. 18, 19. 

EVERY true prayer has its background and 
its foreground. The foreground of prayer 
is the intense, immediate desire for a certain 
blessing which seems to be absolutely neces- 
sary for the soul to have ; the background 
of prayer is the quiet, earnest desire that the 
will of God, whatever it may be, should be 
done. What a picture is the perfect prayer 
of Jesus in Gethsemane ! In front burns 
the strong desire to escape death and to live ; 
but, behind, there stands, calm and strong, 
the craving of the whole life for the doing of 
the will of God. . . . Leave out the fore- 
ground — let there be no expression of the wish 
of him who prays — and there is left a pure 
submission which is almost fatalism. Leave 
out the background — let there be no accept- 
ance of the will of God — and the prayer is 
only an expression of self-will, a petulant 
claiming of the uncorrected choice of him who 
prays. Only when the two, foreground and 
background, are there together, — the special 
desire resting on the universal submission, the 
universal submission opening into the special 
desire, — only then is the picture perfect and 
the prayer complete ! v. 120 , m . 



122 MAY i. 



\ I 7HEN the sun rose this morning it found 
W this great sleeping world and woke 
it. It bade it be itself. It quickened every 
slow and sluggish faculty. It called to the 
dull streams, and said, " Be quick;" to the 
dull birds and bade them sing ; to the dull 
fields and bade them grow ; to the dull men 
and bade them talk and think and work. It 
flashed electric invitation to the whole mass 
of sleeping power which really was the world, 
and summoned it to action. It did not make 
the world. It did not sweep a dead world off 
and set a live world in its place. It did not start 
another set of processes unlike those which 
had been sluggishly moving in the darkness. 
It poured strength into the essential processes 
which belonged to the very nature of the 
earth which it illuminated. It glorified, in- 
tensified, fulfilled the earth. v . 3 , 4 . 

Through wood and stream and field and hill and ocean, 
A quickening life from the earth has burst, 

As it has ever done, with change and motion, 
From the great morning of the world when first 

God dawned on chaos ; in its stream immersed, 
The lamps of heaven flash with a softer light ; 

All baser things pant with life's sacred chirst ; 
Diffuse themselves ; and spend in love's delight, 
The beauty and the joy of their renewed might. 

Shelley. 



MAY 2. 123 

1HEAR men praying everywhere for more 
faith, but when I listen to them carefully 
and get at the real heart of their prayers, very 
often it is not more faith at all that they are 
wanting, but a change from faith to sight. 
. . . Faith says not, "I see that it is good for 
me, and so God must have sent it," but 
" God sent it, and so it must be good for me." 
Faith walking in the dark with God only prays 
Him to clasp its hand more closely, does not 
even ask Him for the lifting of the darkness 
so that the man may find the way himself. 

V. 351, 352. 

Oh that the soul might be at rest ; 

Might yield her quest, 
With the sole thought of God possessed ! 

That she might close her wearied eyes 

And blindfold-wise 
Walk on as under shining skies ; 

As seeing Him who is unseen ; 

And wait serene 
Though twofold night should intervene ! 

O touch of God, O miracle 

That none may tell ! 
Her eyes are closed, and all is well. 

Though twofold night doth round her press 

She knows no less 
He will not leave her comfortless. 

The desolate Cry on Calvary's height, 

Its mid-day night, 
Her pledges are of coming light. 

Harriet McEvven Kimball. 



124 MAY 3. 

When He ascended up on high, He led captivity 
captive, and gave gifts unto men, — Eph. iv. 8. 

O sing praises, sing praises unto our God. Alleluia. 
O sing praises, sing praises unto our King. Alleluia. 

CHRIST was not primarily the Deed-Doer 
or the Word-Saver. He was the Life- 
Giver. He made men live. Wherever He 
went He brought vitality. Both in the days 
of His Incarnation and in the long years of His 
power which have followed since He vanished 
from men's sight, His work has been to create 
the conditions in which all sorts of men should 

lIVC* Harvard Monthly. 

Thrice for us the Word Incarnate high on holy hills 

was set, 
Once on Tabor, once on Calvary, and again on Olivet ; 
Once to shine and once to suffer, and once more as 

King of kings, 
With a merry noise ascending borne by Cherubs on 

their wings, 
Till the glad Angelic voices hail the wardens of the 

Gate, 
" Lift ye up the doors, ye princes, for the Victor comes 

in state." 

And the guards celestial answer from within to that 

strange cry, 
" Who is He the mighty Victor Who claims entrance 

to the sky?" 
Back from His triumphant legions comes reply in 

joyous swell, 
" It is He, the King of Glory, Who hath vanquished 

death and hell : 
Lord of Hosts and strong in battle, Who upon this 

holy tide, 
Leads captivity in fetters, and hath trampled Satan's 

pride." r. f. littledale. 



MAY 4. 125 

The light of the body is the eye ; if, therefore, 
thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of 
light. — Matt. vi. 22. 

LOOK at Jesus on the cross. I see Him 
A there convicting sin by the sight of its 
terrific consequence. 1 see Him also drawing 
men's souls up, away from the earth and 
from themselves, up to God, by that amaz- 
ing sign of how God loved them. And when 
I turn from looking at the Sufferer and look 
into the faces of those men and women to 
whom His suffering has brought its power, 
I see how, in the struggle against sin under 
the power of the love of God, to which the 
cross has summoned them, they are know- 
ing God ; how, in St. Paul's great words, 
"the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father 
of Glory, is giving unto them the spirit of wis- 
dom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, 
the eyes of their understanding being enlight- 
ened. n< gg> 90> 

O Light of Souls, 

Let us not walk in darkness. 

By the Love whereby Thou didst cause the blind to see : 
Enlighten our minds with the Spirit of truth. 

Book of Litanies. Neale. 



126 MAY 5. 



December days were brief and chill, 

The winds of March were wild and drear, 
And nearing and receding still, 

Spring never would, we thought, be here. 
The leaves that burst, the suns that shine, 

Had, not the less, their certain date : — 
And thou, O human heart of mine, 

Be still, refrain thyself and wait. 

Arthur Hugh Clough. 



TT will be good for us to see how widely 
* prevalent the principle is which comes to 
its consummation in the giving of Himself by 
Christ to men. Everywhere faith, or the 
capacity of receiving, has a power to claim 
and command the thing which it needs. Nature 
would furnish us many an exhibition of the 
principle. You plant a healthy seed into the 
ground. The seed's health consists simply in 
this, that it has the power of true relations to 
the soil you plant it in. And how these 
spring-days bear us witness that the soil 
acknowledges this power : no sooner does it 
feel the seed than it replies ; it unlocks all its 
treasures of force; the little hungry black ker- 
nel is its master. "O seed, great is thy 
faith ! " the ground seems to say ; " be it unto 
thee even as thou wilt ; " and so the miracle 
of growth begins. m . l63 . 



MAY 6. 127 



Little Lamb, who lost thee ? — 

I, myself, none other. — 
Little Lamb, who found thee ? — 

Jesus, Shepherd, Brother. 
Ah, Lord, what I cost Thee ! 

Canst Thou still desire? — 
Still mine arms surround Thee, 

Still I lift Thee higher, 

Draw Thee nigher. 

Christina Rossetti. 



Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast 
given me, be with me where I am, 

John xvii. 24. 

T T certainly would make it harder for us to do 
wrong this coming week, easier to do what 
is right, harder to be selfish, easier to be 
Christ-like, if this week we could constantly 
hear Christ praying for us that we might be 
with Him where He is. That prayer would 
draw us to Him, into His life, into His charac- 
ter, and make this week a foretaste of that 
eternity whose promised glory is that there we 
are to be " forever with the Lord." L 3I4 . 



128 MAY 7. 

He giveth to all life, and breath, and all things. 

Acts xvii. 25. 

WHEN the spring comes, the oak-tree with 
its thousands upon thousands of leaves 
blossoms all over. The great heart of the 
oak-tree remembers every remotest tip of 
every farthest branch, and sends to each the 
message and the power of new life. And yet 
we do not think of the heart of the oak-tree as 
if it were burdened with such multitudinous 
remembrance. It is simply the thrill of the 
common life translated. into these million forms. 
. . . Somewhat in that way it seems to me 
that we may think of God's remembrance of 
His million children. . . . That patient suf- 
ferer, that toilsome worker, are far-off leaves 
on the great tree of His life ; far-off, and yet 
as near to the beating of His heart as any leaf 
on all the tree. He remembers them as the 
heart remembers the finger-tips to which it 
sends the blood. . . . If any doubt about Him, 
issuing from them, stops up the channel so 
that He cannot get to them, He waits behind 
the hindrance, behind the doubt, and tries to 
get it away, and feels the withering of the 
unbelieving, unfed leaf as if a true part of 
Himself were dying. And when the obstacle 
gives way, and the doubt is broken and the 
path is once more open, it is almost with a 
shout which we can hear that the life-blood 
leaps to its work again. m. I72> I73 , I74 . 



MAY 8. 129 

The graves were opened ; and many bodies of 
the saints which slept, arose, and came out of the 
graves after His resurrection, and went into the 
holy cit} 1 , and appeared unto many. 

Matt, xxvii. 52, 53. 

T F the city of our heart is holy with the pres- 
* ence of a living Christ, then the dear dead 
will come to us and we shall know they are 
not dead but living, and bless Him who has 
been their Redeemer, and rejoice in the work 
that they are doing for Him in His perfect 
world, and press on joyously towards our own 
redemption, not fearing even the grave, since 
by its side stands He whom we know and 
love, who has the keys of death and hell. 

I- 227- 

Dear dead ! they have become 

Like guardian angels to us ; 
And distant heaven like home, 

Through them begins to woo us ; 
Love that was earthly wings 

Its flight to holier places ; 
The dead are sacred things 

That multiply our graces. 

They whom we loved on earth 

Attract us now to heaven ; 
Who shared our grief and mirth 

Back to us now are given. 
They move with noiseless foot 

Gravely and sweetly round us, 
And their soft touch hath cut 

Full many a chain that bound us. 

F. w. Faber. 



130 MAY 9. 

Curse ye Meroz, saith the angel of the Lord, 
Curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof ; because 
they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of 
the Lord against the mighty. — Judges v. 23. 

THE curse of Meroz is the curse of useless- 
ness ; and these are the sources out of 
which it comes — cowardice and false humility 
and indolence. They are the stones piled upon 
the sepulchres of vigor and energy and work 
for God, whose crushing weight cannot be 
computed. Who shall roll us away those 
stones ? Nothing can do it but the power of 
Christ. The manhood that is touched by Him 
rises into life. ... To be working with God, 
however humbly ; to have part of that service 
which suns and stars, which angels and arch- 
angels, which strong and patient and holy men 
and women in all times have done ; to be, in 
some small corner of the field, stout and brave 
and at last triumphant in our fight with lust 
and cruelty and falsehood, with want or woe 
or ignorance, with unbelief and scorn, with 
any of the enemies of God . . . what a 
change it is when a poor, selfish, cowardly, 
fastidious, idle human creature comes to this ! 
Blessed is he that cometh to the help of the 
Lord, to the help of the Lord against the 
mighty. There is no curse for him. No 
wounds that he can receive while he is fighting 
on that side can harm him. To fight there is 
itself to conquer, even though the victory 
comes through pain and death, as it came to 
Him under whom we fight, the Captain of our 
Salvation, Jesus Christ. n. 3 o 3 , 304 . 



MAY 10. 131 



T^HERE is a wonderful power in sympathy 
A to open and display the hidden richness 
of a man's own seemingly narrow life. . . . 
The holiest soul, pitying the brother-soul 
which has fallen into vilest vice, gains, while 
it keeps its own purity unsoiled, something of 
the sight of that other side of God, the side 
where justice and forgiveness blend in the opal 
mystery of grace, which it would seem as if 
only the soul that looked up out of the depths 
of guilt could see. n. 



120, 121. 



Not wrath, dear Lord, Thy mercy seals. 

Our own unrighteous hands 
Hold back Thy shining chariot-wheels, 

And rob the wistful lands. 

For none shall walk in perfect white 

Till every soul be clean ; 
So close for sorrow and delight 

These human spirits lean. 

But thou go forth and do thy deed, 

In forest and in town, 
Nor sigh for ease, while pain and need 

Are plucking at thy gown. 

And thus, when bitter turneth sweet, 

And every heart is blest, 
Perchance to thee God's hand shall mete 

His unimagined rest. 

Katherine Lee Bates. 



132 MAY ii. 

When He the Spirit of truth is come, He will 
guide you into all truth . . . He shall glorify Me: 
for He shall receive of mine, and shall show it 
unto you. — John xvi. 13, 14. 

HHHIS absorption of every struggle between 
A the good and the evil that is going on in 
the world into the one great struggle of the life 
and death of Jesus Christ . . . follows neces- 
sarily from any such full idea as we Christians 
hold of what Jesus Christ is and of what brought 
Him to this world. If He be really the Son of 
God, bringing in an utterly new way the power 
of God to bear on human life ; if He be the 
natural creator-king of humanity, come for the 
salvation of humanity ; then it would seem to 
follow that the work of salvation must be His 
and His alone ; and if we see the process of 
salvation, the struggle of the good against the 
evil, going on all over the world, we shall be 
ready still to feel that it is all under His aus- 
pices and guidance. . . . 

Once accept what is the central truth of 
operative Christianity, the power of an ever- 
present unseen Spirit, always manifesting 
Christ and making Him influential, and then 
it is not hard to see that, men being the same, 
open to the same influence everywhere, they 
may be and they are turned to the one same 
goodness by the power of the one same spirit 
of Christ. Ii40f 42 . 



T 



MAY 12. 133 



HE power of the Holy Spirit! — an ever- 
lasting spiritual presence among men. 
What but that is the thing we want ? That 
is what the old oracles were dreaming of, what 
the modern spiritualists to-night are fumbling 
after. The power of the Holy Ghost by which 
every man who is in doubt may know what is 
right, every man whose soul is sick may be 
made spiritually whole, every weak man may 
be made a strong man, — that is God's one 
sufficient answer to the endless appeal of man's 
spiritual life ; that is God's one great response 
to the unconscious need of spiritual guidance, 
which He hears crying out of the deep heart 
of every man. n. Io6> I07 . 



Wilt Thou not visit me? 
The plant beside me feels Thy gentle dew, 

And every blade of grass I see 
From Thy deep earth its quickening moisture drew. 

Come, for I need Thy love, 
More than the flower the dew or grass the rain ; 

Come, gently as Thy holy dove ; 
And let me in Thy sight rejoice to live again. 

Yes, Thou wilt visit me : 
Nor plant nor tree Thine eye delights so well, 

As, when from sin set free, 
My spirit loves with Thine in peace to dwell. 

Jones Very. 



134 MAY 13. 



'"THAT is a noble time, a bewildering and 
A exalting time in any of our- lives, when 
into everything that we are doing enters the 
Spirit of God, and thenceforth moving ever 
up toward the God to whom it belongs, that 
Spirit, dwelling in our life, carries our life up 
with it ; not separating our life from the earth, 
but making every part of it, while it still keeps 
its hold on earth, soar up and have to do with 
heaven ; so completing life in its height, by 
making it divine. n. I23 . 



O God the Holy Ghost Who art Light unto Thine 
elect, 

Evermore enlighten us. 
Thou Who art Fire of Love 

Evermore enkindle us. 
Thou who art Lord and Giver of Life, 

Evermore live in us. 
Thou Who art Holiness, 

Evermore sanctify us. 
Thou Who bestowest Sevenfold Grace, 

Evermore replenish us. 
As the Wind is Thy symbol, 

So forward our goings. 
As the Dove, 

So launch us heavenwards. 
As Water, 

So purify our spirits. 
As a Cloud, 

So abate our temptations. 
As Dew, 

So revive our languor. 
As Fire, 

So purge out our dross. 

Christina Rossetti. 



MAY 14. 135 

The Spirit of the Lord is upon vie ; 

Because the Lord hath anointed me to preach 
good tidings unto the meek; 

He hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, 

To proclaim liberty to the captives, and the 
opening of the prison to them that are bound \ 

Isa. lxi. 1. 

DOTH in belief and in duty, this is the work 
*-* of the Holy Spirit ; to make belief pro- 
found by showing us the hearts of the things 
that we believe in ; and to make duty delight- 
ful by setting us to doing it for Christ. O, in 
this world of shallow believers and weary, 
dreary workers, how we need that Holy Spirit ! 
Remember, we may go our way, ignoring all 
the time the very forces that we need to help 
us do our work. The forces still may help us. 
The Holy Spirit may help us, will surely help 
us, just as far as He can, even if we do not 
know His name or ever call upon Him. But 
there is so much more that He might do for us 
if we would only open our hearts and ask 
Him to come into them. n. 230 . 

Let Thy mercy, O Lord, be upon us, and the bright- 
ness of Thy Spirit illumine our inward souls ; that He 
may kindle our cold hearts and light up our dark 
minds, Who abideth evermore with Thee in glory. 

Ancient Collects. Bright. 



136 MAY 15. 



/ will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh ; and 
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your 
old men shall dreani dreams, your young men 
shall see visions ; and also upon the servants and 
upon the handmaids in those days will I pour 
out my Spirit, — the spirit of wisdom and under- 
s landing, the spirit of cozens el and might, the 
spirit of knowledge and of t/ie fear of the Lord. 
Joel ii. 28,- 29. Isa. xi. 2. 

THE intellectual life of Christendom tends 
to democracy. Less and less will it con- 
sent to be the privilege of the selected few. 
... It is impossible to keep the bounds of 
mental life shut against any man when the 
source of all men's knowledge is in God, who 
is the Father of us all, and when the faculty 
of knowledge is closely connected with the 
faculty of moral obedience, which is the right 
and duty of mankind. Instantly this began 
when Christianity was once a living fact. 
Peter stepped out of the chamber of the Pen- 
tecost and spoke to the great multitude in 
words which assumed in them the power of 
understanding, of judging, of deciding ques- 
tions which up to that time had been the 
sacred possession of the scribes and doctors. 
There was nothing like that speech before that 
day. The germs of the modern sermon, the 
modern lecture, and the modern school were in 
it. Thenceforth men's intellects might differ, 
but the intellectual chance was open to every 
man. To the dullest child belonged the right 
to learn all that he could learn, all that was in 
him to learn, of his Father. influence, 269, 27 o. 



MAY 16. 137 

f~^H, my dear friends, do not let your religion 
^^ satisfy itself with anything less than 
God. Insist on having your soul get at Him 
and hear His voice. Never, because of the 
mystery, the awe, perhaps the perplexity and 
doubt which come with the great experiences, 
let yourself take refuge in the superficial things 
of faith. It is better to be lost on the ocean 
than to be tied to the shore. It is better to be 
overwhelmed with the greatness of hearing the 
awful voice of God than to become satisfied 
with the piping of mechanical ceremonies or 
the lullabies of traditional creeds. Therefore 
seek great experiences of the soul, and never 
turn your back on them when God sends 
them, as He surely will. v. 7 s, 79 . 

I am borne out to Thee upon the wave, 
And the land lessens ; cry nor speech I hear, 

Nought but the leaping waters and the brave 
Pure winds commingling. O the joy, the fear ! 

Alone with Thee; sky's rim and ocean's rim 

Touch, overhead the clear immensity 
Is merely God ; no eyes of seraphim 

Gaze in . . . O God, Thou also art the sea ! 

Edward Dowden. 



138 MAY 17. 



T ET the life be filled with the spirit of the 
springtime. Let the voice in its heart 
always keep saying to it, " You are to go on 
filling yourself with vitality and joy, day after 
day, month after month, and then cometh the 
end, then cometh the end ; " and then it is not 
a cessation of life, but fuller life which the 
heart expects. The end which comes to 
the promise of springtime shall be the luxuri- 
ance of summer ! v. 3 6 4 . 

Under gentle types, my Spring 
Masks the might of Nature's king, 
An energy that searches thorough 
From Chaos to the dawning morrow ; 
Into all our human plight, 
The soul's pilgrimage and flight ; 
In city or in solitude, 
Step by step, lifts bad to good, 
Without halting, without rest, 
Lifting Better up to Best ; 
Planting seeds of knowledge pure, 
Through earth to ripen, through heaven endure. 

Emerson. 



MAY 18. 139 



Death ! since thy darksome mist 

Encircled the ail-glorious head of Christ 

Thou now dost shine 

A halo all divine. 

Anna E. Hamilton. 

HHHE crucifixion of Jesus has been illumi- 
nated by the resurrection, the ascension, 
and the Pentecost. . . . Behind its shame 
and pain it has opened a heart of love and 
glory, and St. Paul, summing up his life in its 
best privileges and holiest purposes, says, 
( Mam crucified with Christ." ... As Christ, 
by his self-sacrifice, entered into the company 
of man, so there is a self-surrender by which 
man enters into the company of Christ. He 
came down to us, and tasted on our cross the 
misery of sin. We may go up to His cross, 
and taste, with Him, the glory and peace of 

perfect obedience and communion with God. 

1. 203. 

O Love, Who once in time wast slain, 

Pierced through and through with bitter woe : 

O Love, Who wrestling thus didst gain 
That we eternal joy might know 

O Love, I give myself to Thee, 
Thine ever, only Thine to be. 

J. SCHEFFLER. Tl\ bv C. WlNKWORTH 



140 xWAY 19. 



REVELATION is not the unveiling of God, 
but a changing of the veil that covers 
Him ; not the dissipation of mystery, but the 
transformation of the mystery of darkness 
into the mystery of light. To the Pagan, God 
is mysterious because He is hidden in clouds, 
mysterious like the storm. To the Christian, 
God is mysterious because He is radiant with 
infinite truth, mysterious like the sun. n . 3 n. 



My sight, becoming purified, 
Was entering more and more into the ray 
Of the High Light which of itself is true. 

grace abundant, by which I presumed 
To fix my sight upon the Light Eternal, 
So that the seeing I consumed therein ! 

1 saw that in its depth far down is lying 

Bound up with love together in one volume, 
What through the universe in leaves is scattered ; 
Substance, and accident, and their operations, 
All interfused together in such wise 
That what I speak of is one simple light. 

O how all speech is feeble and falls short 
Of my conceit, and this to what I saw 
is such, 'tis not enough to call it little! 

O Light Eterne, sole in thyself that dwellest, 
Sole knowest thyself, and, known unto thyself 
And knowing, lovest and smilest on thyself ! 

Dante. 



MAY 20. 14! 



1AM sure that the divine nature is three per- 
sons, but one God ; but how much more 
than that I cannot know. That deep law 
which runs through all life, by which the 
higher any nature is, the more manifold and 
simple at once, the more full of complexity 
and unity at once, it grows, is easily accepted 
as applicable to the highest of all natures, — 
God. In the manifoldness of His being these 
three personal existences, Creator, Redeemer, 
Sanctifier, easily make themselves known to 
the human life. I tell the story of them, and 
that is my doctrine of the Trinity. But let 
me not say that that is all. To other worlds 
of other needs, and so of other understandings 
(for our needs are always the avenues for our 
intelligence), other sides of the personal force 
of the divine life must have issued. It is not 
for us to catalogue and inventory Deity ; only 
in humble gratitude and reverence to bear our 
witness of the manifestation of God to us for 
our salvation. And so our doctrine of the 
Trinity is our account of what we know of 
God. L 230 . 

The holy Church throughout all the world doth 

acknowledge Thee ; 
The Father : of an infinite Majesty ; 
Thine adorable, true and only Son ; 
Also the Holy Ghost : the Comforter. 



142 MAY 21. 



Who cove rest Thyself with light as with a gar- 
ment. — Ps. civ. 2 . 

NOT as the answer to a riddle, which leaves 
all things clear, but as the deeper sight 
of God, prolific with a thousand novel ques- 
tions which were never known before, clothed 
in a wonder which only in that larger light dis- 
played itself, offering new worlds for faith and 
reverence to wander in, — so must the New 
Testament revelation, the truth of Father, Son, 
and Spirit, one perfect God, offer itself to man. 

II. 314. 



If it be so, as we believe it is, that in the 
constitution of humanity we have the fairest 
written analogue and picture of the Divine 
existence, then shall we not say that the 
human Christ gave us, in the value which He 
set on human relationships, in His social 
thought of man, an insight into the essential- 
ness and value of that social thought of God 
which we call the doctrine of the Trinity ? 
May it not be that only by multiplicity and 
interior self-relationship can Divinity have the 
completest self-consciousness and energy ? 
Surely, the reverent and thoughtful eye must 
see some such meaning when Jesus Himself 
makes the eternal companionship of the life of 
Deity the pattern and picture of the best 
society of the souls of earth, and breathes out 
to His Father these deep and wondrous words, 
" As thou Father art in Me and I in Thee, that 
they all may be one in Us." influence, s 5 . 



MAY 22. 143 



^PHE divinity of the Father needs assertion 
first of all. Let men once feel it, and 
then nature and their own hearts will come in 
with their sweet and solemn confirmations of 
it. But nature and the human heart do not 
teach it of themselves. The truest teaching of 
it must come from souls that are always going 
in and out before the divine Fatherhood them- 
selves. By the sight of such souls others must 
come to seek the satisfaction that comes only 
from a divine end of life, — must come to crave 
access to the Father. So we believe and so 
we tempt other men to believe in God the 
Father. 1. 2s6 . 



All the earth doth worship Thee : the Father ever- 
lasting. 

We praise Thee, we bless Thee, we worship Thee, 
we glorify Thee, we give thanks to Thee for Thy great 
glory, O Lord God, heavenly King, God the Father 
Almighty. 



144 MAY 23. 



J\ /I Y friend says God sends Christ into the 
world and therefore Christ is not God. 
I cannot see it so. It seems to me just other- 
wise. God sends Christ just because Christ 
is God. He sends Himself. His sending is a 
coming. ... He [our Master] is the Son of 
God. Think of it. Does not "Son" mean 
just this which the church's faith, with the 
best words that it could find, has labored to 
express, "Two persons and one substance." 
That is the Father and the Child. Separate 
personality but one nature. Unity and dis 
tinctness both, but the unity as true a fact as 
the distinctness. Nay, the unity the fact 
which made the essence of His mission, the 
fact which made Him the true, fit, only perfect 

messenger of God and Saviour of the world. 

1. 239. 

Thou art the King of Glory : O Christ. Thou art 
the everlasting Son of the Father. 

O Lord, the only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ ; O 
Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, that 
takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us. 



MAY 24. 145 



REMEMBER, the Holy Spirit is God, and 
God is love. And no man ever asks 
God to come into his heart and holds his heart 
open to God, without God's entering. Chil- 
dren, pray the dear God, the blessed Holy 
Spirit, to come and live in your heart and show 
you Jesus, and make you love to do what is 
right for His sake. Old men, aspire to taste 
already here what is to be the life and joy of 
your eternity. Men and women in the thick 
of life, do not go helpless when there is such 
help at hand ; do not go on by yourselves, 
struggling for truth and toiling at your work, 
when the Holy Spirit is waiting to show you 
Christ, and to give you in Him the profound- 
ness of faith and the delightfulness of duty. 

11. 230, 231. 

Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire, 

And lighten with celestial fire. 

Thou the anointing Spirit art, 

Who dost Thy seven-fold gifts impart. 

Thy blessed unction from above, 

Is comfort, life, and fire of love. 

Enable with perpetual light 

The dulness of our blinded sight. 

Anoint and cheer our soiled face 

With the abundance of Thy grace. 

Keep far our foes, give peace at home ; 

Where Thou art guide, no ill can come. 

Teach us to know the Father, Son, 

And Thee, of Both, to be but One ; 

That, through the ages all along, 

This may be our endless song : 
Praise to Thy eternal merit, 
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 



146 MAY 25. 



Through Him we both have access by one Spirit 
unto the Father. — Eph. ii. 18. 

T F it be not to the Father, the Son's redemp- 
tion is in vain. If it be not through the 
Son, the Father waits and the Spirit moves for 
naught. If it be not by the Spirit, the Father's 
heart stands open and the method of grace is 
perfect, but the unmoved soul stands inactive 
and unsaved. The Scripture revelation comes 
to tell us that end, method, and power, all are 
perfect, and each must thus be worthy of the 
rest. The three are one. Each is eternal, 
and yet as the old creed cries, " There are not 
three Eternals, but one Eternal." Each is 
God, and yet "there are not three Gods, but 
one God," — not three salvations, but one 
salvation, with its equal end and method and 
power, and so by the Trinity in Unity the soul 
is saved. 1. 233 . 

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the 
Holy Ghost: 

As it was In the beginning, is now, and ever shall 
be: world without end. Amen. 



MAY 26. 147 



THE partialness which we see in man, and 
which lets us easily divide our fellow- 
men into classes and label them the men of 
intellect or the men of action, passes away as 
we mount to any thought of God which is at 
all worthy of Him. What God knows is one 
and the same with the love with which He 
loves and the resolve with which He wills. 
You cannot draw a fence through the great 
ocean of infinity. Mythology dreams of its 
many gods with many functions. The mo- 
ment that one God stands forth above all gods, 
the many things which the partial deities do 
lose themselves in the one perfect thing which 
the one only Deity is. And all wisdom unites 
with all power and all love no less in the guid- 
ing of a little child along the slippery path 
which leads to manhood, than in the vast con- 
duct of the destinies of the colossal man who 
lives through all the generations of the race. 

Influence, 221. 



I saw the Power ; I see the Love, once weak, 
Resume the Power ; and in this word, " I see," 
Lo, there is recognized the Spirit of both 
That, moving o'er the spirit of man, unblinds 
His eye, and bids him look. 

Browning. 



148 MAY 27. 

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of 
heaven and earth : 

And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord : 
I believe in the Holy Ghost. 

SOMETIMES, when vitality grows feeble, 
when disappointments and, shall I not say 
still more, success makes the whole business 
of existence seem tawdry, or not worth the 
pains it costs — when the morning brings no 
stimulus and the evening no satisfaction — 
... in all that ebbing and flagging of the 
tide of life, do you know what it is to find 
strength and healthiness, again, in believing 
in God, in believing in the Trinity? Does 
that sound strange ? What ! shall belief in 
a doctrine quicken the feeble pulse and fill 
again the empty channels of a worn and 
weary life ? But, unless it can do this, what 
is the use of your belief ? Nay, shall we not 
have such faith in our great doctrine that we 
shall confidently say that if it does not do that 
for a man, the man who says that he believes 
it does not truly believe it. David said 
"My heart and my flesh fail, but God is the 
strength of my heart and my portion for- 
ever." And how much more we know of God 
than David knew ? All that the life of Jesus 
told, all that the Christian centuries have told 
— the eternally Living One, the great I Am, 
who is both Creator and Father ; the Son, in 
whom was life, which was the light of the 
world : the Spirit, who is the Lord and Giver 
of life — not many gods, but one God — not 
many partial springs, but one great sea of life 
heard behind all. Oxford review. 



MAY 28. 149 



NOTHING can really haunt us except what 
we have the beginning of, the native 
capacity for, however hindered, in ourselves. 
The highest angel does not tempt us because 
he is of another race from us ; but God is our 
continual incitement because we are His 
children. So the ideal life is in our blood, and 
never will be still. We feel the thing we 
ought to be beating beneath the thing we are. 
Every time we see a man who has attained our 
human idea a little more fully than we have, 
it wakens our languid blood and fills us with 
new longings. When we see Christ, it is as 
if a new live plant out of the southern soil 
were brought suddenly in among its poor 
stunted, transplanted brethren, and, blossom- 
ing in their sight, interpreted to each of them 
the restlessness and discontent which was in 
each of their poor hearts. . . . And when we 
die and go to God, it is as if at last the poor 
shrub were plucked up out of its exile and 
taken back and set where it belonged, in the 
rich soil, under the warm sun, where the 
patience which it had learned in its long wait- 
ing should make all the deeper and richer the 
flower into which its experience was set free to 
find its utterance. 1. 35t )6 . 



See, love, afar, the heavenly man 
The Will of God would make, 

The thing I must be when I can 
Love now, for faith's dear sake. 

George MacDonald. 



150 MAY 29. 

Hail, holy Light, offspring of Heaven first-born ! 

before the sun, 

Before the Heavens thou wert, and at the voice 
Of God, as with a mantle did'st invest 
The rising world of waters dark and deep, 
Won from the void and formless infinite. 

Milton. 

WITH the mystery of darkness we are 
familiar. Of the mystery of light we 
have not thought, perhaps, so much. . . . Sup- 
posing that . . something really rich and pro- 
found, were brought out of the darkness into a 
sudden flood of sunlight, would it grow less or 
more mysterious ? Suppose it is a jewel, and 
instead of having to strain your eyes to make 
out the outline of its shape, you can look now 
deep into its heart ; see depth opening beyond 
depth, until it looks as if there were no end to 
the chambers of splendor that are shut up in that 
little stone; see flake after flake of luminous 
color floating up out of the unseen fountain 
which lies somewhere in the jewel's heart. 
Is the jewel less or more mysterious than it was 
when your sight had to struggle to see whether 
it was a topaz or an emerald? Suppose it is a 
landscape. One hour all its features are vague 
and dim in twilight ; hill, field, and stream in 
almost indistinguishable confusion. Six hours 
later the whole is glowing in the noonday sun, 
the streams burning with silvery light, the 
colors of the fresh spring hillsides striking far 
away upon the senses, filling them with de- 
light and wonder. Everything is thrilling and 
bursting with manifest life. Has not the mys- 
tery increased with the ascending sun? 

11. 307, 308. 



MAY 30. 151 



IT was to the American nature, long kept by 
God in His own intentions, till His time 
should come, at last emerging into sight and 
power, and bound up and embodied in this best 
and most American of all Americans, Abraham 
Lincoln, to whom we and those poor frightened 
slaves at last might look up together and love 
to call him, with one voice, our Father. . . . 

The American nature, the American truths, 
of which our President was the anointed and 
supreme embodiment, have been embodied in 
multitudes of heroes who marched unknown 
and fell unnoticed in our ranks. For them, 
just as for him, character decreed a life and a 

death. Sermon on Abraham Lincoln. 



Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow ! 
For never shall their aureoled presence lack : 
I see them muster in a gleaming row, 
With ever youthful brows that nobler show ; 
We find in our dull road their shining track ; 

In every nobler mood 
We feel the orient of their spirit glow, 
Part of our life's unalterable good, 
Of all our saintlier aspiration ; 

They come transfigured back, 
Secure from change in their high-hearted ways, 
Beautiful evermore, and with the rays 
Of morn on their white Shields of Expectation. 

James Russell Lowell. 



152 MAY 31. 

Phillips Brooks ordained Priest, i860. 

THIS seems to me to be the ever-increasing 
joy of the minister's life, if one may vent- 
ure for once to speak of his own work. A 
man becomes a minister because God says, 
"Go speak in the temple the words of this 
life." He begins the service of his fellow-men 
in pure obedience to God's command, but the 
joy and ever-richening delight of the minister's 
work is in finding how deep this human soul 
to which his Lord has sent him really is. The 
nature to which he ministers, as he meets its 
exhibitions here and there, is always amazing 
him with its spiritual capacity, is always 
proving itself capable and worthy of so much 
better and higher ministry than he can give 
it. So the minister of the Gospel finds his 
own humility and the delightfulness of his work 
ever increasing together. 1. 349 . 

THE WORK OF PHILLIPS BROOKS. 

Yet each vjill have one anguish — his own soul 
Which perishes of cold. 

Matthew Arnold 

We know this anguish. By the closed door 

Of their own lives men listen for the slow 

And fluttering breath of souls by doubt laid low, 

Which freeze in darkness, now they hope no more. 

The door of thy great life stood wide, and o'er 

The threshold leaned thy eager soul, aglow 

With that warm hope the apostles used to know. 

With that strong faith the prophets preached of yore. 

O glorious soul ! How many lips shall bless 

That faithfulness, that wealth of hopefulness 

That like God's sun persisted in its cheer ! 

Forged at such heat thy swift word struck the ear 

To pierce men's souls — which, finding day still shine, 

Rose and unbarred their lives to life divine. 

Hannah Parker Kimball. 



JUNE i. 153 



^FHE rich atmosphere and rich earth surround 
the stone just as they surround the rose. 
They are as free to one as to the other. But 
the rose grows red and soft and fragrant, and 
the stone lies cold and hard and gray. The 
same rich humanity, the same culture, the 
same beauty lies about two men, as free to 
one as to the other, and one grows harder and 
more brutal and more insensible day by day, 
and the other grows kindlier, truer, and more 
sensitive. MSS . 



1 God's spirit falls on me as dewdrops on a rose 
If I but like a rose my heart to Him unclose." 

: In all eternity no tone can be so sweet 
As where man's heart with God in unison doth beat." 

; Whate'erthou lovest, man, that too become thou must. 
God if thou lovest God ; dust if thou lovest dust." 

Immeasurable is the Highest; who but knows it? 
And yet a human heart can perfectly enclose It," 



154 JUNE 2. 

C VERY healthy growth creates the condi- 
^ tions of new growth, makes new growth 
possible. The illustrations are numberless 
everywhere. Every ray of sunlight that gives 
ripeness to an apple makes the apple opener 
to more sunlight, which shall ripen it still more. 
. . . Every summer is also a spring-time. 
Indeed we may make this a test of growth. 
Every ray of sun which does not open the 
ground to new sunlight, is not feeding it but 
baking it. This is the true test of growing 
force. It opens the beautiful reactions between 
itself and the growing thing, and creates an 
openness for yet more of itself. n. - 



41. 42. 



The twig sprouteth, 

The moth outeth, 

The plant springeth, 

The bird singeth : 

Tho' little we sing to-day, 

Yet are we better than they ; 

Tho' growing with scarce a showing, 

Yet, please God, we are growing. 

The twig teacheth, 
The moth preacheth, 
The plant vaunteth, 
The bird chanteth, 
God's mercy overflowing 
Merciful past man's knowing. 
Please God to keep us growing 
Till the awful day of mowing. 

Christina Rossetti. 



JUNE 3, 155 



Christ in you, the hope of glory. — Col. i. 27. 

GREAT is the work that Christ does for us. 
Greater, deeper still, because without it 
all the other would be purposeless and useless, 
is the work that Christ does in us. How 
wonderful it is. The world glows with the 
assurance of redemption. Heaven opens, and 
there the saints and elders are prostrate before 
the throne. The whole spiritual universe 
trembles with the new spiritual life which has 
come to it out of the marvellous death. In the 
midst of it all lies one soul, dead and incapable 
of action, though intensely alive with desire 
for a share in all this glorious vitality. . . . 
The world about it is strong with the promise 
and temptation of holy things. The soul itself 
is weak with its own unholiness. Then comes 
the better, perfect, completing promise of a 
change of soul. The Christ who has done all 
this offers to do one thing more, to make the 
dead soul alive and able to enjoy and use it all. 
He will come into us, not merely stand without 
us. He will come in and be Himself the power 
which lays hold of His own invitations. We 
may feed on Him. Nay, let us take His own 
strong word and say, "He that eateth Me, the 
same shall live by Me." That is the inner 
life, Christ in the soul rising up and laying 
hold of the infinite possibilities which redemp- 
tion has prepared. n. 245 , 246 . 



156 JUNE 4. 

If any man offend not in word, the sa?ne is a 
perfect man, and able also to bridle the whole body. 

James iii. 2. 

HE profoundly honest. Never dare to say, 
^ ... through ardent excitement or con- 
formity to what you know you are expected to 
say, one word which at the moment when you 
say it, you do not believe. It would cut down 
the range of what you say, perhaps, but it 
would endow every word that was left with 
the force of ten. preaching, 1Q7 . 

But why are we so glad to talk and take our turns to 

prattle, 
When so rarely we get back to the stronghold of our 

silence 
With an unwounded conscience? 
Our talk is often empty, often vain. 
This comfort from without 
Is no small enemy to that from God which speaks to 

us within. 
So we must watch and pray, 
For fear our days go idly by. 
If you may talk and it be best for you, 
Talk and build up the soul ; 
But evil habit, and carelessness about our prattle, 
Make us neglect the doorway of our mouth. 
Yet holy communing about the things of God leads us 

no little way along the spiritual road, 

And most of all when man meets man 

Like to himself in heart and mind, like to himself — in 

God. 

Thomas a Kempis. 



JUNE 5. 157 



J\ A Y dear friends, never let the seeming worth- 
* * * lessness of sympathy make you keep 
back that sympathy of which, when men are 
suffering around you, your heart is full. Go 
and give it without asking yourself whether it is 
worth the while to give it. It is too sacred a 
thing for you to tell what it is worth. God, 
from whom it comes, sends it through you to 
His needy child. Do not ever let any low skep- 
ticism make you distrust it, but speak out what 
God has put it in your heart to speak to any 
sufferer. The sympathy of God for man has 
just this same difficulty about it, if we try to 
analyze it. We cannot say that He has done 
anything for us. We cannot tell even of any 
thought that He has put into our minds. Merely 
He has been near us. He has known that we 

were in trouble and He has been sorry for us. 

1. 108, 109. 

For I, a man, with men am linked, 
And not a brick with bricks ; no gain 
That I experience must remain 
Unshared ; but should my best endeavor 
To share it, fail — subsisteth ever 
God's care above, and I exult 
That God by God's own ways occult 
May — doth I will believe — bring back 
All wanderers to a single track. 

Browning. 



158 JUNE 6. 



See that thou make all things according to the 
pattern shewed to thee in the mount, — Heb. viii. 5. 



COR man to accept the pattern of his living 
1 absolutely from any other being besides 
God in all the universe would be for him to 
sacrifice his self and to lose his originality. But 
for man to find and simply reproduce the pict- 
ure of his life which is in God is for him not 
to sacrifice but to find his self. For the man 
is in God. The ideal, the possible perfection 
of everything that he can do or, be, is there in 
God ; and to be original for any man is not to 
start aside with headlong recklessness and do 
what neither brother-man nor God dreamed of 
our doing ; but it is to do with filial loyalty 
the act which, because God is God, a being 
such as we are ought to do under the circum- 
stances, in the conditions in which we stand. 
Because no other being ever was or ever will be 
just the same as you, and because precisely the 
same conditions never before have been and 
never will be grouped about any other mortal 
life as are grouped around yours, therefore for 
you to do and be what you, with your own 
nature in your own circumstances, ought in the 
judgment of the perfect mind to do and be, that 
is originality for you. m. I2t 13 . 



JUNE 7. 159 



IS not Christ the mountain up into which the 
believer goes, and in which he finds the di- 
vine idea of himself ? As a mountain seems to 
be the meeting-place of earth and heaven, the 
place where the bending skies meet the aspiring 
planet, the place where the sunshine and the 
cloud keep closest company with the granite 
and the grass : so Christ is the meeting-place 
of divinity and humanity ; He is at once the 
condescension of divinity and the exaltation of 
humanity ; and man wanting to know God's 
idea of man, any man wanting to know God's 
idea of him, must go up into Christ, and he will 
find it there. ni. 16. 



There littleness was not ; the least of things 

Seemed infinite ; and there his spirit shaped 

Her prospects, nor did he believe, — he saw. 

What wonder if his being thus became 

Sublime and comprehensive ! Low desires, 

Low thoughts, had there no place ; yet was his heart 

Lowly ; for he was meek in gratitude, 

Oft as he called those ecstasies to mind, 

And whence they flowed ; and from them he acquired 

Wisdom, which works through patience ; thence he 

learned 
In oft recurring hours of sober thought 
To look on Nature with a humble heart, 
Self-questioned where it did not understand, 
And with a superstitious eye of love. 

Wordsworth. 



i6o JUNE g. 



And He laid His right hand upon me, saying 
unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last: 
I am He that live th, and was dead; and, behold I 
am alive for evermore, Amen. — Rev. i. 17, 18. 

" T AM He that liveth, and was dead." We 

do not begin to know how wonderful that 

is. Remember the eternally living, the very life 

of all lives. And yet into that life of lives death 

has come, — as an episode, an incident. I do 

not speak now of the immense provocation, the 

immense love that brought so strange a thing 

as the submission to death on the part of the 

Ever-living One. I speak only of this, that 

when death came to Him it was seen to be not 

the end of life, but only an event in life. 

1. 214. 

" Thou knowest not now ; for here we see but darkly 
The outlines of His Grace ; 
The rest is learned in Heaven's eternal glory, 
And face to face. 

" Then thou shalt know ; that passionless hereafter 
Shall solve all mystery : 
Dream not that life can hold the tide of wonder 
In store for thee." 



JUNE 9. 161 

THE disciples began as fishermen who could 
not do without their nets and boats and 
houses and fishing friends and sports and gains 
and gossipings. Jesus carried them up till they 
were crying, " Lord, show us the Father, and it 
sufficeth us." That wonderful change — how 
wonderful it was we forget, because the story 
is so familiar — He brought about by showing 
them His salvation. When, living with Him, 
they saw the glory of forgiveness and regenera- 
tion, saw the new life that opened before those 
who really knew His grace, everything changed 
to them. It was not so important how they 
fared, what food they ate, what they wore, how 
many fish they caught. "All these things do 
the nations of the earth seek after." To them 
the questions shifted. The tests of life swept 
higher up. Were they indeed His ? Had they 
caught His spirit ? Were they living His life ? 
Had they part in His eternity ? And so when 
you and I really desire the salvation of Christ, 
He will do for us all that He did for them. Our 
tests of life, too, shall sweep up. 1. 297 , 29 s. 

How inexhaustibly the spirit grows ! 
One object she seemed 'erewhile born to reach 
With her whole energies, and die content, 
So like a wall at the world's end it stood, 
With naught beyond to live for — is it reached ? 
Already are new undreamed energies 
Out-growing under, and extending further 
To a new object ; — there's another world ! 

Browning. 



162 JUNE 10. 



TESUS spends the night in prayer and med- 
itation. Out of this solitude, out of this 
mysterious communion with His Father, in 
which He has, as it were, refilled Himself with 
the assurance that the human is son to the 
Divine, He comes when morning breaks, and 
gathering His disciples around Him, He speaks 
to them, and the multitude who have thronged 
about Him, the Sermon on the Mount. . . . 

Neander calls the Sermon on the Mount " the 
Magna Charta of the kingdom of God." It is 
a fine phrase, and in one sense it is completely 
true. But really the idea of God which fills the 
great discourse is not the idea of king, but the 
idea of father. . . . What gives it its great, 
everlasting value, is the passing over of king- 
ship into fatherhood ; or, if you please to put it 
so, the opening and deepening of kingship till it 
reveals the fatherhood which lies folded at the 
heart of it. influence, 25,26,27, 

Thou Who wast Centre of all Heights on the Mount of 
Beatitudes 
Grant us to sit with Thee in heavenly places. 

Christina Rossetti. 



JUNE ii. 163 



WHAT do you know about the uses of the 
Lord, of this great work which the 
Lord has to do ; what do you know of it that 
gives you the right to say that your power is 
little ? God may have some most critical use 
to put you to as soon as you declare yourself 
His servant. Men judge by the size of things ; 
God judges by their fitness. . . . Fitness is 
more than size. You can see something of 
your size ; but you can see almost nothing of 
your fitness until you understand all the won- 
derful manifold work that God has to do. It 
is a most wanton presumption and pride for 
any man to dare to be sure that there is not 
some very important and critical place which 
just he and no one else is made to fill. It is 
almost as presumptuous to think you can do 
nothing as to think you can do everything. 
The latter folly supposes that God exhausted 
Himself when He made you ; but the former 
supposes that God made a hopeless blunder 
when he made you, which it is quite as impi- 
ous for you to think. u . 29 8, 299 . 

Lord, teach me how to do Thy will, 

And to walk worthily and humbly before Thee. 

Thou art my wisdom ; Thou dost really know me, 

Thou knewest me before the world was made, or ever 

1 was born in it. 

Thomas a Kempis. 



164 JUNE 12. 



/ saw the dead, small and great, stand before 
God. — Rev. xx. i 2 . 

TAKE these three ideas, and I think that we 
can see something of what it must have been 
for souls to stand, as John the Evangelist in his 
great vision saw them standing before God. 
They had gone up above all the small and tem- 
porary standards, and laid their lives close upon 
the one perfect and eternal standard by which 
men must be judged. No longer did it matter 
to them whether they were rich or poor, whether 
men praised them, or abused them, or pitied 
them. The one question about themselves, into 
which all other questions gathered and were 
lost, was whether they were good, whether they 
were obedient to God. 

And then, along with this, there had come to 
them a true and cordial meeting with their breth- 
ren. No child of their Father was too lofty or 
too low for them to be truly his brethren, when, 
they stood, small and great, together before 
God. 

And yet, again, in presence of the Infinite, 
they had comprehended their immortality. They 
had seen how, within that life to which their 
lives belonged, there was room for a growth 
which might go on to all eternity. 

No wonder that as St. John looked upon that 
vision it filled all his soul with joy. iv. 7 o, 7t . 



JUNE 13. 165 

REMEMBER that there is an atheism which 
still repeats the creed. There is a belief 
in God which does not bring Him, nay, rather 
say which does not let Him come, into close 
contact with our daily life. The very reverence 
with which we honor God may make us shut 
Him out from the hard tasks and puzzling prob- 
lems with which we have to do. Many of 
us who call ourselves theists are like the savages 
who, in the desire to honor the wonderful sun- 
dial which had been given them, built a roof 
over it. Break down the roof ; let God in on 
your life. „. l6o . 

The thought of God, the thought of Thee, 

Who liest in my heart, 
And yet beyond imagined space 

Outstretched and present art, — 

The thought of God is like the tree 

Beneath whose shade I lie, 
And watch the fleets of snowy clouds 

Sail o'er the silent sky. 

'Tis like that soft invading light, 

Which in all darkness shines, 
The thread that through life's sombre web 

In golden pattern twines. 

The wild flower on the mossy ground 

Scarce bends its pliant form, 
When overhead the autumnal wood 

Is thundering like a storm. 

So is it with our humbled souls 

Down in the thought of God, 
Scarce conscious in their sober peace 

Of the wild storms abroad. 

F. W. Faber. 



166 JUNE 14. 

Enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut 
thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret. 

Matt. ii. 6. 

I need not leave the jostling world, 

Or wait till daily tasks are o'er, 
To fold my palms in secret prayer 

Within the close-shut closet door. 

There is a viewless cloistered room 
As high as heaven, as fair as day, 

Where, though my feet may join the throng, 
My soul can enter in and pray. 

No human step approaching breaks 

The blissful silence of the place ; 
No shadow steals across the light 

That falls from my Redeemer's face. 

One hearkening even cannot know 
When I have crossed the threshold o'er; 

For He alone who hears my prayer 
Has heard the shutting of the'door. 

Harriet McEwen Kimball. 

JESUS never did a deed, He never thought a 
thought, that He did not carry it back with 
His soul before it took its final shape and get 
His Father's judgment on it. He lifted His eyes 
at any instant and talked through the open sky, 
and on the winds came back to Him the answer. 
He talked with Pilate and with Peter, with Herod 
and with John ; and yet His talk with them was 
silence ; it did not begin to make His life, to 
be His life, compared with that perpetual com- 
munion with His Father which made the funda- 
mental consciousness as it made the unbroken 
habit of His life. v. 83. 



JUNE 15. 167 

When the burnt offering began, the song of the 
Lord began with the trumpets. 

II. Chron. xxix. 27. 

An offering of a free heart will I give Thee, and 
praise Thy name, O Lord. — Ps. liv. 6. 

NOT in a gloomy silence, as if the people 
were doing a hard duty which they would 
not do if they could help it, did the smoke of 
their offering ascend to God ; but with a burst 
of jubilant music and with a song of triumphant 
joy, which rang down through the crowded 
courts, the host of the Jews claimed for them- 
selves anew their place in the obedience of God. 
The act of sacrifice was done amid a chorus of 
delight. „. 22 . 

Nothing more grateful can I offer Him, 

Than wholly to give up my heart to God, joining it 

closely unto His. 
Then all my inward self shall leap for joy, 
When my soul shall wholly be at one with God. 
Then shall He say to me, 
" Wilt thou be with Me? 
I will be with thee." 
And I shall answer, 

" O Lord, bow down and stay with me, 
And I shall love to be with Thee ; 
This is the end of my desire, 
A heart made one with Thee." 

Thomas a Kempis. 



168 JUNE 16. 



No chastening for the present seemeth to be joy- 
ous, but grievous : nevertheless afterward it yieldeth 
the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which 
are exercised thereby. — Heb. xii. 1 1 . 

WHEN a man conquers his adversaries and 
his difficulties, it is not as if he never had 
encountered them. Their power, still kept, is 
in all his future life. They are not only events 
in his past history, they are elements in all his 
present character. His victory is colored with 
the hard struggle that won it. His sea of glass 
is always mingled with fire, just as this peaceful 
crust of the earth on which we live, with its 
wheat fields, and vineyards, and orchards, and 
flower-beds, is full still of the power of the con- 
vulsion that wrought it into its present shape, 
of the floods and volcanoes and glaciers which 
have rent it, or drowned it, or tortured it. Just 
as the whole fruitful earth, deep in its heart, is 
still mingled with the ever-burning fire that is 
working out its chemical fitness for its work, 
just so the life that has been overturned and 
overturned by the strong hand of God, filled 
with the deep revolutionary forces of suffering, 
purified by the strong fires of temptation, keeps 
its long discipline forever, roots in that discipline 
the deepest growths of the most sunny and lux- 
uriant spiritual life that it is ever able to attain. 

IV. 113. 



JUNE 17. 169 

THE NEW COLOSSUS. 
[ The Bartholdi Statue of Liberty.~\ 

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, 

With conquering limbs astride, from land to land ; 

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand 

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame 

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name 

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand 

Glows world-wide welcome ; her mild eyes command 

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. 

" Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp ! " cries she 

With silent lips. " Give me your tired, your poor, 

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, 

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. 

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, 

I lift my lamp beside the golden door ! " 

Emma Lazarus. 

MY patriotism lives and flutters as a senti- 
ment unless I know that the land I love 
is really making, by its constant life, a contribu- 
tion to the righteousness and progress of the 
world. When I know that, then I set my pa- 
triotic impulse free to act. My land becomes to 
me merely the special spot where I am placed 
to labor for the universal spiritual benefit of 
man. Then the old Psalmist's words become 
real to me ; and as I live my life of citizen or 
public officer, as I take my office or cast my 
vote or pay my tax, I say with David, " Be- 
cause of the house of the Lord our God, I will 
seek to do thee good." Such was the perpet- 
ual, self -limited character of the love of Jesus 
for His native land. influence, i 33 . 



170 JUNE 18. 



YOU remember, perhaps, in Tennyson's 
"Enoch Arden " how, when Enoch has 
made his resolution and deliberately determined 
that he will not claim the home to which he has 
a right, and has settled down to his solitary life, 
these lines describe his condition : 

" He was not all unhappy. His resolve 
Upbore him, and firm faith, and evermore 
Prayer from a living source within the will, 
And beating up thro' all the bitter world, 
Like fountains of sweet water in the sea, 
Kept him a living soul." 

What are such words as these but an echo of 
the strong words of Jesus, which declared that 
if a man lost his life for the highest purposes, 
"for my sake and the gospel's," he should find 
it. Indeed there are various half-mystic words 
of Christ which explain and illuminate this truth, 
of which our own experience bears witness, that 
when a man voluntarily surrenders that which 
is legitimately his for some sublimer claim, he 
does not really lose it; its spiritual essence, 
its precious soul, remains with him, and is still 
his. . . . Shall we not think that Christ spoke 
all His deep words out of His own experience ? 
He himself had known what it was to gain the 
life He lost, to have the thing that He surren- 
dered. When He gave up the home of the 
foxes and the birds, it was to find a home all 
the more deeply in His Father's love. 

in. 238-240. 



JUNE 19. 171 

Finally, b ret/wen, whatsoever things are true, 
whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are 
just, whatsoever tilings are pit re, whatsoever things 
are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report ; if 
thei'e be any virtue and if thei'e be any praise, think 
on these things, — Phil. iv. 8. 

SOME people seem to be here in the world 
just on their guard all the while, always so 
afraid of doing wrong that they never do any- 
thing really right. They do not add to the 
world's moral force ; as the man, who, by con- 
stant watchfulness over his own health, just 
keeps himself from dying, contributes nothing 
to the world's vitality. All merely negative 
purity has something of the taint of the im- 
purity that it resists. The effort not to be friv- 
olous is frivolous itself. The effort not to be 
selfish is very apt to be only another form of 
selfishness. L l83 , l84 . 

Is it then true that none of us can keep him- 
self unspotted from the world unless his life be 
full of reverence for God and trust in Christ and 
tender pity for his fellow-men ? What is that 
but to say, that " Except a man be born again 
he cannot enter into the kingdom of God" ? 
Oh, what poor makeshifts all our laws and de- 
cencies and proprieties appear beside the live 
power of the new manhood of grace. Oh, how- 
hard and hopeless seems the prudent, watchful, 
timid man, who is trying to save himself by 
constant self-denials, beside the new freeman of 
the Lord Jesus Christ, full of the high ambitions 
and sur^ hopes of the heavenly life. 1. I9I . 



172 JUNE 20. 



OUT your hand in Christ's, that as He leads 
* you other men, who have turned away 
from Him, may look and see you walking with 
Him, learn to love Him through your love. I 
do not believe any man ever yet genuinely, 
humbly, thoroughly gave himself to Christ with- 
out some other finding Christ through him. I 
wish it might tempt some of your souls to the 
higher life. I hope it may. At least I am sure 
that it may add a new sweetness and nobleness 
to the consecration which some young heart is 
making of itself to-day, if it can hear, down the 
new path on which it is entering, not merely the 
great triumphant chant of personal salvation, 
"unto Him that loved us and washed us from 
our sins be glory and dominion;" but also 
the calmer, deeper thanksgiving for usefulness, 
" Blessed be the God of comfort, who comfort- 
eth us that we may be able to comfort them that 
are in tribulation." 1. 16 , 



. 17. 



If there be some weaker one, 

Give me strength to help him on ; 

If a blinder soul there be, 

Let me guide him nearer Thee. 

Make my mortal dreams come true 

With the work I fain would do ; 

Clothe with life the weak intent, 

Let me be the thing I meant ; 

Let me find in thy employ 

Peace that dearer is than joy ; 

Out of self to love be led 

And to heaven acclimated, 

Until all things sweet and good 

Seem my natural habitude. Whittier. 



JUNE 21. 173 



THIiNK what the study of nature might be- 
come, if, keeping every accurate and care- 
ful method of investigation of the way in which 
the universe is governed and arranged, it yet 
was always hearing, always rejoicing to hear, 
behind all methods and governments and machin- 
eries, the sacred movement of the personal will 
and nature which is the soul of all. Whether 
we call such hearing science or poetry, it matters 
not. If we call it poetry, we are only assert- 
ing the poetic issue of all science. If we call it 
science, we are only declaring that poetry is not 
fiction but the completest truth. The two unite 
in religion, which, when it has its full chance to 
do all its work, shall bring poetry and science 
together in the presence of a recognized God, 
whom the student then shall not shrink from, 
but delight to know, and find in Him the illumi- 
nation and the harmony of all his knowledge. 

V. 79. 80. 

But we, fraile wights ! whose sight cannot sustaine 

The sun's bright beames when he on us doth shyne, 

But that their points rebutted back againe 

Are duld, how can we see with feeble eyne 

The glory of that Majestie Divine 

In sight of whom both Sun and Moone are dark 

Compared to His least resplendent sparke. 

The meanes, therefore, which unto us is lent 

Him to behold, is on his workes to looke 

Which He hath made in beauty excellent 

And in the same as in a brasen book 

To reade enregistred in every nooke 

His goodnesse, which his beautie doth declare, 

For all that's good is beautiful and fair. 

Spenser. 



174 JUNE 22. 



'"THE unconscious needs of the world are all 
1 appeals and cries to God. He does not 
wait to hear the voice of conscious want. The 
mere vacancy is a begging after fulness ; the 
mere poverty is a supplication for wealth ; the 
mere darkness cries for light. Think then a 
moment of God's infinite view of the capacities 
of His universe, and consider what a great cry 
must be forever going up into His ears to which 
His soul longs and endeavors to respond. . . . 
" He first loved us ! " Our hope is in the ear 
which God has for simple need ; so that mere 
emptiness cries out to Him for filling, mere 
poverty for wealth. n. 95 , 9 6. 



If there had anywhere appeared in space 

Another place of refuge, where to flee, 
Our hearts had taken refuge in that place, 

And not with Thee. 

For we against creation's bars had beat 

Like prisoned eagles, through great worlds had sought 
Though but a foot of ground to plant our feet, 

Where Thou wert not. 



And only when we found in earth and air, 

In heaven or hell that such might nowhere be — 

That we could not flee from Thee anywhere, 

We fled to Thee. 

R. C. Trench. 



JUNE 23. 175 

God, who at sundry times and in diverse man- 
ners spake in tinie past unto the fathers by the 
prophets, hath in these last days spoken to us by 
His Son. — Heb. i. 1, 2. 

NO one can read the Gospel of St. John and 
then turn to what is left us of the life 
of Socrates, without being struck and almost 
startled with the suggested comparison between 
the account of Christ's last talk with His disci- 
ples before His crucifixion, which is given in five 
chapters of that Gospel, and the beautiful story 
of what Socrates said to Simmias and Cebes 
and his other friends in the prison at Athens 
just before he drank the hemlock, — the story 
which Plato has written for us in the Phaedo. 
And nowhere could the essential difference as 
well as the likeness of the two great teachers 
become more apparent. ... I can almost dream 
what Socrates would say to any man who said 
there was no difference between Jesus and him. 
But how shall we state the difference ? One is 
divine and human ; the other is human only. 
One is Redeemer ; the other is philosopher. 
One is inspired, and the other questions. One 
reveals, and the other argues. These state- 
ments, doubtless, are all true. And in them all 
there is wrapped up this, which is the truth of 
all the influence of Jesus over men's minds, 
that where Socrates brings an argument to meet 
an objection, Jesus always brings a nature to 
meet a nature, — a whole being which the truth 
has filled with strength, to meet another whole 
being which error has filled with feebleness. 

Influence, 235, 245. 



176 JUNE 24. 



\_Ye~\ are built upon the foundation of the apostles 
and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief 
corner-stone ; in whom all the building fitly framed 
together groweth up into an holy temple in the Lord. 

Eph. ii. 20, 21. 

HTHERE are the multitudes who go in and 
* out, who count the church as theirs, who 
gather from her thought, knowledge, the com- 
fort of good company, the sense of safety ; and 
then there are others who think they truly, as 
the light phrase so deeply means, "belong to 
the church." They are given to it, and no com- 
pulsion could separate them from it. They are 
part of its structure. They are its pillars. Here 
and hereafter they can never go out of it. Life 
would mean nothing to them outside the church 
of Christ. h. 68t 69 . 

Behold, O Lord, how thy faithful Jerusalem rejoices 

in the triumph of the Cross and the power of the 

Saviour ; grant, therefore, that those who love her 

may abide in her peace, and those who depart from her 

may one day come back to her embrace ; that when all 

sorrows are taken away, we may be refreshed with the 

joys of an eternal resurrection, and be made partakers 

of her peace, through Thy mercy, O our God, Who art 

blessed, and dost live, and govern all things, world 

without end. 

Ancient Collects, Bright. 



JUNE 25. 177 



T^HERE is some duty which God has made 
* ready for you to do to-morrow ; nay, to- 
day ! He has built it like a house for you to 
occupy. You have not to build it. He has 
built it, and He will lead you up to its door 
and set you with your feet upon its threshold. 
Will you go in and occupy it ? Will you do 
the duty which He has made ready ? Perhaps 
it is the great comprehensive duty of the con- 
secration of yourself to Him. Perhaps it is 
some special task. Whatever it is, may He 
who anticipated your love by His own in giv- 
ing you the task, now help you to fulfil His 
love with yours by doing it. Amen. v . 56. 

If to-day you are not ready, 
Will you be to-morrow ? 

And to-morrow is a day you must not count on ; 
How do you know that you will have the morrow for 
your own? 

Lord, 

All is Thine 
In heaven and earth. 

I long to give myself to Thee, a free-will offering, 
And be forever Thine. 
Lord, in my simple heart I give myself to-day to be 

Thy servant ever, 
To listen unto Thee, and be a sacrifice of everlasting 

praise. 

Thomas a Kempis. 



178 JUNE 26. 



When to the sessions of sweet silent thought 

I summon up remembrance of things past, 

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, 

And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste : 

Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, 

For precious friends hid in death's dateless night, 

And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe, 

And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight : 

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, 

And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er 

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, 

Which I new pay as if not paid before. 

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, 
All losses are restored and sorrows end. 

Shakespeare. 

QURELY there is no more beautiful sight 
^ to see in all this world, — full aS it is 
of beautiful adjustments and mutual minis- 
trations, — than the growth of two friends' 
natures who, as they grow old together, are 
always fathoming, with newer needs, deeper 
depths of each other's life, and opening richer 
veins of one another's helpfulness. And this 
best culture of personal friendship is taken up 
and made, in its infinite completion, the gospel 
method of the progressive saving of the soul 
by Christ. n. 54 . 



JUNE 27. 179 



How many loaves have ye? — Matt. xv. 34. 

IT is the completeness of the nature of Jesus, 
the way in which it is all one, and works 
and lives as one, that makes Him often so very 
different from us. Our lives are disjointed. 
One part of us works at a time. It is hard for 
us to be brave and prudent together ; hard for 
us to be liberal and just at the same time. . . . 
Now in this miracle of Jesus which I have 
recalled to you there is a meeting of generosity 
and frugality which is striking and suggestive. 
These two things do meet indeed with us. We 
try to be generous and frugal at the same time, 
but the result in us is mean. We try to give 
and yet to save. We try to satisfy the in- 
stinct which makes us want to aid our breth- 
ren, and at the same time not to disappoint 
the instinct which makes us want to save and 
spare the things we have. But the result in 
us is mean. When Christ unites generosity 
and frugality the result in Him is noble. We 
feel His pity and care for the poor people a 
great deal more when we see Him take the 
wretched little stock of food which they pos- 
sessed into His hands and make that the basis 
of His bounty, than if with an easy sweep of 
His hand He had bid the skies open and rain 
manna and quails once more upon the hungry 
host. His generosity is emphasized for us by 
its frugal methods, and His frugality is digni- 
fied by its generous purpose. n. 128, 129. 



i8o JUNE 28. 



A MAN comes up to our life, and looking 
round upon the crowd of our fellow-men, 
he says, "See, I will strike the life of this 
brother of ours and you shall hear how true 
it rings/ ' He does strike it, and it does seem 
to them to ring true, and they shout their ap- 
plause ; but we whose life is struck feel run- 
ning all through us at the stroke the sense of 
holiowness. Our soul sinks as we hear the 
praises. They start desire but they reveal 
weakness. No true man is ever so humble 
and so afraid of himself as when other men are 
praising him most loudly. L 254> 



Or what if Heaven for once its searching light 
Lent to some partial eye, disclosing all 

The rude bad thoughts that in our bosom's night 
Wander at large, nor heed Love's gentle thrall ? 



Thou know'st our bitterness — our joys are Thine ; 

No stranger Thou to all our wanderings wild : 
Nor could we bear to think how every line 

Of us, Thv darkened likeness and defiled, 



Stands in full sunshine of Thy piercing eye, 
But that Thou call'st us Brethren : sweet repose 

Is in that word ! the Lord who dwells on high 
Knows all, yet loves us better than He knows. 

John Keble. 



JUNE 29. 181 

THIS church of all the saints is a great power 
in the world. Every true servant of God 
must belong with this mighty service of God ; 
must get his strength through it, and contribute 
his strength into it. Ever from out the past, 
from the old saints who lived in other times, 
from Enoch, David, Paul, and John, Augustine, 
Jerome, Luther, Leighton, there comes down the 
power of God to us. Because they were full of 
it, we, by association with them, grow fuller 
of it than we could be by ourselves. ... Our 
faith mounts up with their exultant prayers. 
Our weak devotion, tired and drooping, rests 
against the strong pillars of their certain trust. 
Their quick sight teaches our half-opened eyes 
the way to look toward the light that shall 
unseal them wholly. L I23 . 

I think of the saints I have known, and lift up mine 

eyes 
To the far away home of beautiful Paradise, 
Where the song of saints gives voice to an undividing 

sea 
On whose plain their feet stand firm while they keep 

their jubilee. 
As the sound of waters their voice, as the sound of thun- 

derings, 
While they all at once rejoice, while all sing and while 

each one sings ; 
Where more saints flock in, and more, and yet more, 

and again yet more, 
And not one turns back to depart thro' the open en- 
trance door. 
O sights of our lovely earth, O sound of our earthly 

sea, 
Speak to me of Paradise, of a41 blessed saints to me ; 
Or keep silence touching them, and speak to my heart 

alone 
Of the Saint of saints, the King of kings, the Lamb on 

the Throne. 

Christina Rossetti. 



182 JUNE 30. 



"PHE child [Jesus] clasped His tiny arms about 
1 His mother's neck, or laid His little hand 
into the strong hand of Joseph, as they walked 
on the long road to Egypt, with the same sim- 
ple desire to utter love and to find iove which is 
the first sign of Life akin to their own that mil- 
lions of parents' hearts have leaped to recognize 
in their first-born. Nay, he but little understands 
the dignity and unity of all God's vast creation 
who is offended or distressed when he is told that 
in the Lord of Life these primal affections were of 
the same sort with those which make the beauty 
of the life of the beings which are less than man. 
Even the dog, the bird, the lion, know these 
first instincts of companionship which found their 
consummate exhibition upon earth when the Son 
of Mary clung to a human mother with a human 

love. Influence, 79, 80. 

. . . Whate'er be the fate that has hurt us or joyed, 
Whatever the face that is turned to us out of the void ; 
Be it cursing or blessing ; or night, or the light of the 

sun ; 
Be it ill, be it good ; be it life, be it death, it is One ; — 

One thought, and one law, and one awful and infinite 
power ; 

In atom and world ; in the bursting of fruit and of 
flower ; 

The laughter of children, and the roar of the lion un- 
tamed ; 

And the stars in their courses — one name that can 
never be named. 

Richard Watson Gilder. 



JULY i. 183 

Phillips Brooks ordained Deacon, J8jg. 

He preached Christ . . . that He is the Son of 
God. — Acts xx. 20. 

ONLY he who consents to enlarge his own 
conception of the possibilities of faith 
with God's can calmly watch the everlasting 
growth of revelation, see the old open into the 
new, and yet know that the truth of Christ is 
the truth of eternity, and that when the soul 
of God claimed the soul of man in the Incar- 
nation, it took possession of it forever ; and 
so Christian faith can never die. There have 
been no nobler servants of God and of hu- 
manity than they whose special mission it has 
been to teach this truth to men. ... 

To discriminate between the eternal sub- 
stance of Christianity and its temporary forms, 
to bid men see how often forms had perished 
and the substance still survived, to make men 
know the danger of imperfect and false tests 
of faith, to encourage them to be not merely 
resigned but glad as they beheld the one faith 
ever casting its old forms away, and by its un- 
dying vitality creating for itself new — this was 
the noble work which Dean Stanley did for 
multitudes of grateful souls all over Chris- 
tendom. He led countless hearts out of the 
surprise and fear of their own day into the un- 
surprised and fearless peace of faith in God. 
Thus it was that he opened wide the great 
gates of the Divine Life, and made the way 
more clear for the children to their Father. 

in. 81, 82. 



1 84 JULY 2, 



T OVING obedience, loving obedience is the 
-*— ' only atmosphere in which the vision of 
the general purpose and the faithfulness in 
special work grow in their true proportion and 
relation to each other. The distant hills with 
the glory on their summits, and the close 
meadow where the grass waits for the scythe, 
— they meet completely in the broad kingdom 
of a loved and obeyed Lord. And who is Lord 
but Christ ? And where but in the soul of him 
who finds in Christ the worthy revealer of the 
life's purpose and the sufficient master of every 
deed shall the great ideals of life and the petty 
details of life come harmoniously together ? 
Obey Him, love Him, and nothing is too great, 
nothing is too little ; for love knows no struggle 
of great or little. No impulse is too splendid 
for the simplest task ; no task is too simple for 
the most splendid impulse. v. n 9) 120. 



I love thy men and women, Lord, 

The children round thy door ; 
Calm thoughts that inward strength afford — 

Thy will, O Lord, is more. 

But when thy will my life shall hold, 

Thine to the very core, 
The world which that same will did mould, 

1 shall love ten times more. 

George MacDonald. 



JULY 3. 185 

Y\ 7HILE the union of duty and joy is nat- 
ural it is not essential and unbreakable. 
The plant ought to come to flower, but if the 
plant fails of its flower it is still a plant. The 
duty should open into joy, but it may fail of 
joy and still be duty. If the joy is not there, 
still hold the duty, and be sure that you have 
the real thing while you are holding that. Be 
all the more dutiful, though it be in the dark. 
Do righteousness and forget happiness, and so 
it is most likely that happiness will come. 



Do only Thou, in that dim shrine, 
Unknown or known, remain, divine; 
There, or if not, at least in eyes 
That scan the fact that round them lies, 
The hand to sway, the judgment guide, 
In sight and sense, Thyself divide : 
Be Thou but there, — in soul and heart, 
I will not ask to feel Thou art. 

Arthur Hugh Clough. 



1 86 JULY 4. 



Land of the willful gospel, thou worst and thou best ; 
Tall Adam of lands, new-made of the dust of the West ; 
Thou wroughtest alone in the Garden of God, unblest 
Till He fashioned lithe Freedom to lie for thine Eve on 
thy breast. 

Knowledge of Good and of 111, O Land, she hath given 

thee ; 
Perilous godhoods of choosing have rent thee and riven 

thee; 
Will's high adoring to Ill's low exploring hath driven 

thee — 
Freedom, thy Wife, hath uplifted thy life and clean 

shriven thee. 

Sidney Lanier. 

ON my country's birthday ... I may ask 
you for your prayer in her behalf. That 
on the manifold and wondrous chance which 
God is giving her, — on her freedom (for she is 
free, since the old stain of slavery was washed 
out in blood) ; on her unconstrained religious 
life ; on her passion for education, and her 
eager search for truth ; on her jealous care for 
the poor man's rights and opportunities ; on 
her countless quiet homes where the future 
generations of her men are growing ; on her 
manufactures and her commerce ; on her wide 
gates open to the east and to the west ; on her 
strange meetings of the races out of which a 
new race is slowly being born ; on her vast 
enterprise and her illimitable hopefulness, — 
on all these materials and machineries of man- 
hood, on all that the life of my country must 
mean for humanity, I may ask you to pray 
that the blessing of God the Father of man, 
and Christ the Son of man, may rest forever. 

11. 21. 



JULY s- 187 



/ am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. 

Matt. v. 17. 

T^EAR your sins away. Starve your tumul- 
tuous passions. Resist temptations. Aye, 
if you will, punish yourself with stripes for your 
iniquities. Cry out to yourself and to your 
brethren, with every voice that you can raise, 
"Cease to do evil ; " but all the time, down be- 
low, as the deepest cry of your life, let there 
be this other, "Learn to do well." If you can 
indeed grow vigorously brave and true and 
pure, then cowardice and falsehood and licen- 
tiousness must perish in you. O wondrous 
silent slaughter of our enemies ! O wondrous 
casting out of fear as love grows perfect ! O 
death to sin, which comes by the new birth to 
righteousness ! O destruction, which is but 
the utterance of fulfilment on the other side ! 
O everlasting assurance, that evil has of right 
no place in the world : and that if good would 
only lift itself up to its completeness, it might 
claim the whole world and all of manhood for 
itself ! iv. 2l8 , 2I9 . 



1 88 JULY 6. 

Into the woods my Master went, 

Clean forspent, forspent. 

Into the woods my Master came, 

Forspent with love and shame. 

But the olives they were not blind to Him, 

The little gray leaves were kind to Him : 

The thorn-tree had a mind to Him 

When into the woods He came. 

Out of the woods my Master went, 

And He was well content. 

Out of the woods my Master came, 

Content with death and shame. 

When Death and Shame would woo Him last, 

From under the trees they drew Him last : 

Twas on a tree they slew Him — last 

When out of the woods He came. 

Sidney Lanier. 

TN the garden of Gethsemane reason seemed 
* to totter on her throne. For the last time 
the desperate hands had to cling to the truth in 
instant fear. But there, too, it is not by the di- 
rect conviction of the reason ; it is by the adjust- 
ment of the whole life in obedience — to which, 
no doubt, the reason gave its assent, but which 
was a transaction far beyond the reason's lim- 
its — that the trembling reason finds composure. 
When He said, "Thy will be done," all the 
obscurity began to scatter, and those words 
which He said four days later, after He had 
risen, to His disciples, " Ought not Christ to 
have suffered these things ? " . . . words full 
of the peace of satisfied intelligence, — began 
to take shape upon His lips. influence, 23 o. 



JULY 7. 189 

SOME of you may remember how our New 
England poets' poet sings to the farmer 
over whose fields he has been wandering : 

" One harvest from thy field 

Homeward brought the oxen strong ; 
A second crop thine acres yield, 
Which I gather in a song." 

This is what makes the everlasting interest of 
nature ; her capacity of endless association with 
man, from whom all real interest in the world 
must radiate, and to whom it always must re- 
turn. As Emerson sings again of those whom 
he had loved, and who made the landscape in 
the midst of which he had loved them for ever 
dear : 

" They took this valley for their toy, 
They played with it in every mood ; 
A cell for prayer, a hall for joy, — 
They treated nature as they would. 

" They coloured the horizon round ; 

Stars flamed and faded as they bade ; 
All echoes hearkened for their sound, — 
They made the woodlands glad or mad." 

" They treated nature as they would." So 
all men, all races, treat nature according to 
their wills, whether their wills be the deep 
utterances of their characters or only the light 
and fickle impulses of self-indulgence. And 
what they are to nature, nature is to them — 
to one man the siren, who fascinates him to 
drunkenness and death ; to another, the wise 
friend, who teaches him all lessons of self- 
restraint and sobriety and patient hope and 
work. iii. 27 o, 272 . 



190 JULY 8. 

Years of the modern ! years of the unperform'd ! 

Your horizon rises, I see it parting away for more au- 
gust dramas, 

I see not America only, not only Liberty's nation, but 
other nations preparing, 

I see tremendous entrances and exits, new combina- 
tions, the solidarity of races, 

I see that force advancing with irresistible power on 
the world's stage. 

Your dreams, O years, how they penetrate through me ! 

(I know not whether I sleep or wake :) 
The perform'd America and Europe grow dim, retiring 

in shadow behind me, 
The unperform'd, more gigantic than ever, advance, 

advance upon me. 

Walt Whitman. 

WE must never lose out of our sight the vi- 
sion, never lose out of our ears the music 
of the real Church and the real world strug- 
gling each into perfection for itself, and so both 
into unity and identity with one another. 

Very interesting have been in history the 
pulsations, the brightening and fading, the com- 
ing and going of this great truth of the Church 
and the world ideally identical. That truth is 
always present in the words of Jesus. . . . 
The ideal Church, which was the real Church 
in his eyes, knew no limit but humanity. . . . 
The relation of the Church to the active world, 
the conflict and the possible harmony between 
them, the message of the Church to the world, 
the turning of the world into the Church, these 
are the problems and the visions which are 
more and more occupying the minds of thought- 
ful vision-seeing men. iv. S2> 53 , 54 . 



JULY 9. 191 



OBEYING Christ/' we say ; and what is 
Christ ? I think over all that I know 
of Him, and this is what He is : first, He is 
the utterance of the eternal righteousness, the 
setting forth before men of that supreme nat- 
ure in which there is the source and pattern 
of all goodness, — God; second, He is a man 
of clear, sharp, definite character, who lived a 
life in Palestine which still shines with a dis- 
tinctness that no other human life can rival ; 
third, by His spirit He is a perpetual presence, 
a constant standard and inspiration in the 
heart of every man who loves and trusts 
Him. All those things come up to me when 
I say " Christ." And now can such a Christ 
speak to me ? . . . 

There is some act that you are questioning, 
about to-morrow or to-day. If Jesus were at 
hand, you would go out and ask Him, 'Ms it 
Thy will that I should do it, oh, my Lord ? " 
Can you not ask Him now ? Is the act right ? 
Would He do it ? Will it help your soul ? 
. . . And if the answer to them all is "yes! " 
then it is just as truly His command that you 
should do that act as if His gracious figure 
stood before your sight and His finger visibly 
pointed to the task. v. 355 , 356. 

And the Christ who came of old to His own 

As truly comes to them now, 
Where the faithful before His altar throne 

With hearts believing bow, — 

EMMANUEL, then and now. 

Hariet McEwen Kimball. 



192 JULY 10. 

NOT merely to make men love you and 
honor you, but to know how to be loved 
and honored without losing yourself and grow- 
ing weak, — that is the problem of many of the 
sweetest, richest, most attractive lives. . . . 

If the much-beloved man can look up and 
demand the love of God ; if, catching sight of 
that, he can crave it and covet it infinitely 
above all other love; if, laying hold of its 
great freedom, he can make it his, and know 
that he loves God, and know that God loves 
him, — then he is free. Then let him come 
back and take into a glowing heart the warmest 
admiration and affection of his brethren ; let 
him walk the earth with hosts of friends, the 
heaven that he carries in his heart preserves 
him. They cannot make him conceited, for he 
who lives with God must be humble. They 
cannot drown his selfhood, for the God he 
loves and serves is always laying upon him 
his own personal duties, and bringing the soul 
before its own judgment-seat every day. 

V. 154. 

To pass through life beloved as few are loved. 
To prove the joys of earth as few have proved, 
And still to keep the soul's white robe unstained, 
Such is the victory thou hast gained. 

And Love, that guards where wintry tempests beat, 
To thee was shelter from the summer heat. 
What need for grief to blight or cares annoy 
The heart whose God was her exceeding joy? 

Eliza Scudder. 



JULY ii. 193 



^THE same light which showed you the 
* heaven that you were made for has al- 
ways showed you the rock that you were 
chained to ; as the same word of Jesus which 
showed the young nobleman the treasures in 
heaven brought back before his mind the treas- 
ures on earth from which he could not tear 
himself away. This makes the sacredness 
and awfulness of life when we come to know 
it, that we are never so near our highest as 
when we are most sensible of the danger of 
our lowest, and the danger of the lowest is 
never so real to us as when the splendor of the 
highest stands wide open. L 344> 



O Lord, how wonderful in depth and height, 
But most in man, how wonderful Thou art ! 

With what a love, what soft persuasive might 
Victorious o'er the stubborn fleshly heart, 

Thy tale complete of saints Thou dost provide, 

To fill the thrones which angels lost through pride ! 

O what a shifting parti-colored scene 
Of hope and fear, of triumph and dismay, 

Of recklessness and penitence, has been 
The history of that dreary, lifelong fray ! 

And O the grace to nerve him and to lead, 

How patient, prompt, and lavish at his need ! 

John Henry Newman. 



194 JULY 12. 

Aaron said, Thou kiiowest the people, that they 
are set on mischief. For they said unto me, Make 
us gods, which shall go before us. . . . And I said 
unto them, Whosoever hath any gold, let them bi'eak 
it off. So they gave it me : then I cast it into the 
fire and there came out this calf. 

Ex. xxxii. 22, 23, 24. 

T^HE father says of his profligate son whom 
* he has never done one wise or vigorous 
thing to make a noble and pure-minded man : 
"I cannot tell how it has come. It has not 
been my fault. I put him into the world and 
this came out." The father whose faith has 
been mean and selfish says the same of his 
boy who is a sceptic. Everywhere there is 
this cowardly casting off of responsibilities 
upon the dead circumstances around us. It 
is a very hard treatment of the poor, dumb, 
helpless world which cannot answer to defend 
itself. It takes us as we give ourselves to it. 
It is our minister fulfilling our commissions 
for us upon our own souls. If we say to it, 
"Make us noble, " it does make us noble. If 
we say to it, " Make us mean," it does make 
us mean. And then we take the nobility and 
say, "Behold, how noble I have made my- 
self." And we take the meanness and say, 
"See how mean the world has made me." 

in. 48, 49. 



JULY 13. 195 

ALL the separation from sin, all the self- 
sacrifice by which alone you could pre- 
serve your own purity and help your brethren, 
has been in you the renewal, the echo, of that 
terrible giving of Himself for truth and man 
which Christ accomplished. But if, as you 
have sacrificed yourself in any way, there has 
come into you the rich divine assurance of 
God's love, the deep and peaceful joy in obey- 
ing God, and far bright hopes for your human- 
ity, broken but glorious prospects of what an 
obedience, perfect where yours is stumbling, 
complete where yours is partial, shall some day 
make this world to be ; if all this has come to 
you upon your cross, as it came to the Lord on 
His, then the glory as well as the grief of the 
crucifixion is renewed in you, and the satis- 
faction as well as the pain of your new life is 
uttered when you say, in soft and solemn 
words, "I, too, am crucified with Christ. " 



But if, impatient, thou let slip thy cross, 

Thou wilt not find it in this world again, 

Nor in another ; here, and here alone 

Is given thee to suffer for God's sake. 

In other worlds we shall more perfectly 

Serve Him and love Him, praise Him, work for Him, 

Grow near and nearer Him with all delight ; 

But then we shall not any more be called 

To suffer, which is our appointment here. 



And while we suffer, let us set our souls 

To suffer perfectly : since this alone, 

The suffering, which is this world's special grace, 

May here be perfected and left behind. 

Ugo Bassi's Sermon in the Hospital. 



196 JULY 14. 



Plainness and clearness without shadow of stain ! 

Clearness divine ! 

Ye heavens, whose pure dark regions have no sign 

Of languor, though so calm, and though so great 

Are yet untroubled and unpassionate ! 

Who, though so noble, share in the world's toil, 

And, though so task'd, keep free from dust and soil ! 

I will not say that your mild deeps retain 

A tinge, it may be, of their silent pain 

Who have long'd deeply once, and long'd in vain ; 

But I will rather say that you remain 

A world above man's head, to let him see 

How boundless might his soul's horizons be, 

How vast, yet of what clear transparency ! 

How it were good to live there, and breathe free ! 

How fair a lot to fill 

Is left to each man still ! 

Matthew Arnold. 

YX /E have all taken a sorrow or a perplexity 
* * out into the noontide or the midnight 
and felt its morbid bitterness drawn out of it, 
and a great peace descend and fill it from the 
depth of the majesty under whose arch we 
stood. . . . The sweet and solemn influence 
which comes to you out of the noontide or the 
midnight sky does not take away your pain, 
but it takes out of it its bitterness. It lifts it 
to a higher peace. It says, "Be still and wait." 
It gives the reason power and leave and time 
to work. It gathers the partial into the em- 
brace of the universal. v. 235. 



JULY 15. 197 

TT is not as the present possessor of all truth 
1 that (the church) invites men to her house- 
hold. She must not claim that. Men will 
discover that her claim is false if she does. But 
it is as the possessor of truth out of which God 
will call, nay is forever calling new truth, that 
she summons men not merely to a present 
which she offers, but to a future in which she 
believes. The church is progressive by her 
very essence. The church is man occupied by 
Christ. And since Christ cannot at once occupy 
man completely, and cannot be satisfied until 
He has occupied man completely, the church 
must make progress. If she ceases to advance 
she dies. Only in all her progress she believes 
in the continuity and economy of God. She 
looks for the truth which she is to know to 
come out of the truth which she knows al- 
ready ; and she is sure that no duty done or 
light attained in any most obscure corner of 
her life is wasted, but helps to the perfect duty 
and the perfect light that are to be. That is 
why in her is the true home for the man who 
most hopes and prays for the progress of man- 
kind. ILl37> 

Past and Future are the wings 
On whose support harmoniously conjoined 
Moves the great spirit of human knowledge. 

Wordsworth. 



198 JULY 16. 



\\ 7HO of us has not bowed his will to some 
* * supreme law, accepted some obedience 
as the atmosphere in which his life must live, 
and found at once that his mind's darkness 
turned to light, and that many a hard question 
found its answer ? Who has not sometimes 
seemed to see it all as clear as daylight, that 
not by the sharpening of the intellect to super- 
natural acuteness, but by the submission of 
the nature to its true authority, man was at 
last to conquer truth ; that not by agonizing 
struggles over contradictory evidence, but by 
the harmony with Him in whom the answers 
to all our doubts are folded, a harmony with 
Him brought by obedience to Him, our doubts 
must be enlightened ? influence, 23I . 

O Thou who makest both light and darkness, 

Thine is also the light invisible, the revelation of God 
to our souls. 

God is the Eternal, who shows us light ; bind the sacri- 
fice of our hearts, with the cords of good-will. 

If we have lost Thee, O Lord, show Thyself to us again ! 
let us seek Thee chiefly in well-doing. 

O Thou that alone makest all contradictions clear, in 
Thy light let us see light. 

Illuminate our minds with practice of humility, and 
confirm them with growth of faith. 

Make our thoughts the lively echoes of Thy command- 
ments ; and take our hearts for Thy kingdom. 

Book of Litanies. Rowland Williams. 



JULY 17. 199 



l\ A AN is made so that some sense of critical- 
ness is necessary to the most vigorous 
and best life always. Let me feel that noth- 
ing but this moment depends upon this mo- 
ment's action, and I am very apt to let this 
moment act pretty much as it will. Let me 
see the spirits of the moments yet unborn 
standing and watching it anxiously and I must 
watch it also for their sakes. ,. 327j 328 . 



Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, 

Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, 

And marching single in an endless file, 

Bring diadems and fagots in their hands. 

To each they offer gifts after his will, 

Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all. 

I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp, 

Forgot my morning wishes, hastily 

Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day 

Turned and departed silent. I, too late, 

Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn. 

Emerson. 



200 JULY 18. 



""TO open the eyes and find a Christ beside 
1 us, — not to go long journeys to discover 
a Christ with whom before we have had noth- 
ing to do, — this is the Christian conversion. 
. . . How did the Saviour first prove Himself 
to you ? Was it not by the past which sud- 
denly or gradually became full of Him, so that 
you recognized that He had been busy on you 
when you did not know it, that He had been 
leading you when you thought you had been 
wandering, so that you saw your past thoughts 
grow luminous as His inspirations, your past 
dreams as the contagions of His presence and 
the prophecies of His touch ? Was not this 
His answer when you called Him? Not, "I 
am coming/' away off in the distance, but 
" Here I am," spoken right out of the very 
soul and centre of your life. v. 212. 

Thou Life within my life, than self more near ! 
Thou veiled Presence infinitely clear ! 
From all illusive shows of sense I flee, 
To find my centre and my rest in Thee. 

Take part with me against these doubts that rise 
And seek to throne Thee far in distant skies ! 
Take part with me against this self that dares 
Assume the burden of these sins and cares ! 

How shall I call Thee who art always here, 
How shall 1 praise Thee who art still most dear, 
What may I give Thee save what Thou hast given, 
And whom but Thee have I in earth or heaven ? 

Eliza. Scudder. 



JULY 19. 201 

And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, 

And come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy 

upon their heads : 
They shall obtain joy and gladness, — and sorrow 

and sighing shall flee away. — Ps. xxxv. 10. 

JOY and pain, so far from being inconsistent 
with and contradictory to one another, 
are, in some true sense, each other's compli- 
ments, and neither alone, but both together, 
make the true sum of human life. There is a 
conceivable world where pure, unclouded joy 
can come, just as there are countries where 
the mountains are very lofty and all nature 
is on so grand a scale that it can bear a pure, 
unclouded sky, and in its unveiled splendor, per- 
fectly satisfy the eye. But there are other 
lands whose inferior grandeur needs for its 
perfect beauty the effects of mist and cloud 
that give its lower mountains the mystery and 
poetry which they could not have in them- 
selves. So one may compare the Swiss and 
the Scotch landscapes. And something of the 
same sort is true about this world and marks 
its inferiority, proves that it is not yet the 
perfect state of being. It needs the pain of 
life to emphasize its joy. Its joy is not high 
or perfect enough to do without the emphasis 
of pain. 11. 30 . 



202 JULY 20. 

ONCE in the hours while He hung there, a 
cry of desolation, abandonment, and dis- 
grace, burst from the Sufferer's lips. "My 
God ! My God ! why hast thou forsaken me?" 
He cries, making His own the words of an old 
psalm of woe. When I read what men have 
written to explain the meaning of Jesus in 
that cry, 1 always feel anew how much deeper 
than our comprehension went his identification 
with humanity when He plunged into the dark- 
ness of its sin. " He was made flesh ! " Into 
what mysterious contact with the sinfulness 
to which the flesh of man had given itself that 
being made flesh brought him, 1 know no man 
has ever fathomed. . . . Christ, who, in His 
love, had gone down to the deepest and most 
terrible depths of humanity, even to being cru- 
cified between two thieves, seemed for a mo- 
ment to have lost himself, and cried out to the 
Father, with whom He was eternally and in- 
separably one, "Oh, why hast Thou forsaken 
Me ? " If the cry bewilders as we try to com- 
prehend the deity to which it appeals, it may 
at least reveal to us something of the depth 
out of which it ascends. ,. I98f I99 , 200 . 

He who did most shall bear most: the strongest shall 

stand the most weak. 
Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for : my flesh 

that I seek 
In the Godhead. I seek and I find it. 

Browning. 



JULY 21. 203 



Y\ TE cannot attain to all abundance in this 
* * one short life which is our only one, 
but if we can come to God and be His ser- 
vants, the knowledge of how to be things 
which we shall never be may enter into us. In 
poverty we may have the blessing of riches ; 
in enforced ignorance the blessing of knowl- 
edge ; in loneliness the blessing of friendship ; 
and in suspense and doubt the blessing of 
peace and rest. v. i 57 . 



I wept, I prayed 
A solemn prayer, conceived in agony, 
Blessed with response instant, miraculous ; 
For in that hour my spirit was at one 
With Him who knows and satisfies her needs ; 
The supplication and the blessing sprang 
From the same source, inspired divinely both. 
I prayed for light, self-knowledge, guidance, truth, 
And these like heavenly manna were rained down 
To feed my hungered soul. 

Here was the lofty truth revealed, that each 
Must feel himself in all, must know where'er 
The great soul acts or suffers or enjoys, 
His proper soul in kinship there is bound, 
Then my life-purpose dawned upon my mind, 
Encouraging as morning. 

Emma Lazarus. 



204 JULY 22. 

Whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he 
shall have more abundance. — Matt. xiii. 12. 

""THIS has been always true, that the new 
idea has always been born of the old, 
that when men have advanced to higher truth 
it has been from the basis of the truth which 
they have held already. It has been not by 
flinging their net out into the heavens in hopes 
to catch a star, but by digging deeper into the 
substance of the earth on which they stood, 
and finding there a root. And that is what we 
have to look for in the future. You and I cling 
to the old historic statements of our faith. We 
hold fast by the old historic Church as it ap- 
pears to-day. What is our feeling as we hold 
fast there ? . . . We stand expecting change 
and progress, new truth, new light. But we 
stand here in the historic Church, in the his- 
toric truth, because we believe that the new 
truth must come out of this old truth, the per- 
fect truth out of this partial truth, some day. 
We keep close to the seven loaves because we 
believe that when the multitude is fed it will 
be with an abundance blessed by God out of 

this, which, however meagre, is still real. 

11. 136. 



JULY 23. 205 



]Y[OT by mere moods, not by how I feel to- 
day or how I felt yesterday, may I know 
whether I am indeed living the life of God, but 
only by knowing that God is using me to help 
others. No mood is so bright that it can do 
without that warrant. No mood is so dark 
that, if it has that, it need despair. It is good 
for us to think no grace or blessing truly ours 
till we are aware that God has blessed some 
one else with it through us. \ l8 



We cannot kindle when we will 
The fire which in the heart resides, 

The spirit bloweth and is still, 

In mystery our soul abides ; 
But tasks in hours of insight will'd 
Can be through hours of gloom fulfill 'd. 

With aching hands and bleeding feet 

We dig and heap, lay stone on stone ; 
We bear the burden and the heat 
Of the long day and wish 'twere done. 
Not till the hours of light return 
All we have built do we discern. 

Matthew Arnold. 



206 JULY 24. 

Glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, 
which are God's. — I. Cor. vi. 20. 

"THERE is no true care for the body which 
' forgets the soul. There is no true care 
for the soul which is not mindful of the body. 
The pressure of psychology on physiology, the 
wise and learned, also the unwise and igno- 
rant, methods of reaching physical conditions 
through the change of mental states which are 
so prominent in the medical practice of to-day, 
bear witness to the first fact. All the kind of 
teaching which a few years ago went by the 
name of muscular Christianity gives testimony 
to the second, 

. . . The duty of physical health and the 
duty of spiritual purity and loftiness are not 
two duties ; they are two parts of one duty, — 
which is the living of the completest life which 
it is possible for man to live. And the two 
parts minister to one another. Be good that 
you may be well ; be well that you may be 
good. Both of those two injunctions are rea- 
sonable, and both are binding on us all. 

V. 229, 230. 

As the bird wings and sings 

Let us cry : all good things 

Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more now than flesh 

helps soul. 

Browning. 



JULY 25. 207 

TO how many a saint the day and place 
where he first heard God's voice will be 
earth's one sacred memory, even long after 
earth's life is over. Do you think that Moses 
will not speak of the bush, and Samuel of the 
little temple-chamber, and Peter and John of 
their boats on the still lake, and Paul of the 
Damascus road, and Matthew of his tax-table, 
and the poor woman of the wayside well, when 
they are met above ? Only the last day shall 
tell how much of earth is hallowed ground. . . . 
It is indeed a goodly spirit that treasures its 
past miracles, that goes down the gracious 
avenues of life to find the bushes out of which 
it first heard God's voice. n 55> 56 . 

Magnificent 
The morning rose, in memorable pomp, 
Glorious as e'er I had beheld, — in front, 
The sea lay laughing at a distance ; near, 
The solid mountains shone, bright as the clouds, 
Grain-tinctured, drenched in empyrean light ; 
And in the meadows and the lower grounds 
Was all the sweetness of a common dawn, — 
Dews, vapors, and the melody of birds, 
And laborers going forth to till the fields. 
Ah ! need I say, dear Friend ! that to the brim 
My heart was full ? I made no vows, but vows 
Were made for me ; bond unknown to me 
Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly, 
A dedicated Spirit. On 1 walked 
In thankful blessedness, which yet survives. 

Wordsworth. 



2o8 JULY 26. 



AIl^HEN Christ showed us God, then man 
* * had only to stand at his highest and look 
up to the Infinite above him to see how small 
he was. And, always, the true way to be 
humble is not to stoop till you are smaller than 
yourself, but to stand at your real height 
against some higher nature that shall show you 
what the real smallness of your greatest great- 
ness is. The first is the unreal humility that 
always goes about depreciating human nature ; 
the second is the genuine humility that always 
stands in love and adoration, glorifying God. 

1. 340, 341. 



I have gone the whole round of Creation : I saw and I 

spoke ! 
I, a work of God's hand for that purpose, received in 

my brain 
And pronounced on the rest of His handwork — returned 

Him again 
His creation's approval or censure : I spoke as I saw. 
I report, as a man may of God's work — all's love yet 

all's law! 

And thus looking within and around me, I ever renew 

(With that stoop of the soul which in bending upraises 
it too) 

The submission of Man's nothing-perfect to God's All- 
Complete, 

As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to His feet ! 

Browning. 



JULY 27. 209 

O wretched man that I am / who shall deliver 
me from the body of this death ? I thank God 
through Jesus Christ our Lord. The law of the 
Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free 
from the law of sin and death, 

Rom. vii. 24, 25 ; viii. 2. 

T HAVE no patience with the foolish talk which 
* would make sin nothing but imperfection, 
and would preach that man needs nothing but 
to have his deficiencies supplied, to have his 
native goodness educated and brought out, in 
order to be all that God would have him be. 
The horrible incompetency of that doctrine 
must be manifest enough to any man who knows 
his own heart, or who listens to the tumult of 
wickedness which rises up from all the dark 
places of the earth. Sin is a dreadful, positive, 
malignant thing. What the world in its worse 
part needs is, not to be developed, but to be de- 
stroyed. Any other talk about it is shallow and 
mischievous folly. The only question is about 
the best method and means of destruction. Let 
the sharp surgeon's knife do its terrible work. 
Let it cut deep and separate as well and thor- 
oughly as it can, the false from the true, the 
corrupt from the uncorrupt : it never can dissect 
away the very principle of corruption which is 
in the substance of the blood itself. Nothing 
but a new reinforcement of health can accom- 
plish that. iv. 2i 7 , ? i8. 



210 JULY 28. 

T"HE power of mere activity is often over- 
*■ rated. It is not what the best men do, 
but what they are, that constitutes their truest 
benefaction to their fellow-men. The things that 
men do get their chief value, after all, from the 
way in which they are able to show the exist- 
ence of character which can comfort and help 
mankind. . . . It seems to me that there is re- 
assurance here for many of us who seem to 
have no chance for active usefulness. We can 
do nothing for our fellow-men. But still it is 
good to know that we can be something for 
them ; to know (and this we may know surely) 
that no man or woman of the humblest sort 
can really be strong, gentle, pure, and good, 
without the world being better for it, without 
somebody being helped and comforted by the 
very existence of that goodness. 1. io5 . 

Our destiny, our being's heart and home, 
Is with infinitude, and only there ; 
With hope it is, hope that can never die, 
Effort, and expectation, and desire, 
And something evermore about to be. 
Under such banners militant the soul 
Seeks for no trophies, struggles for no spoils 
That may attest her prowess, blest in thoughts 
That are their own perfection and reward, 
Strong in herself and in beatitude 
That hides her, like the mighty flood of Nile 
Poured from his fount of Abyssinian clouds 
To fertilize the whole Egyptian plain. 

Wordsworth. 



JULY 29. 211 

And He said, Whereunto shall we liken the king- 
dom of God ? or with what comparison shall we 
compare it? 

It is like a grain of mustard seed, which when 
it is sown in the earth, is less than all the seeds 
that be in the earth : 

But when it is sown, it groweth up, and be- 
cometh greater than all herbs, and shooteth out 
great branches ; so that the foivls of the air may 
lodge under the shadow of it. — Mark iv. 30-32. 

OH, wondrous tree, whose seed came surely 
from the hand of God, whose growth 
has never passed out of His watchful care, 
which He has set here in this rich, wayward, 
tumultuous soil of human life, how hast thou 
wrestled for existence with this bounteous yet 
reluctant ground, how hast thou sent thy roots 
into the pierced heart of man's affections! 
Through what dark stormy nights hast thou 
struggled with the winds, and grown strong in 
wrestling ! How hast thou drawn up into thy- 
self what is eternal and spiritual in man and 
made it claim its kinship to divinity ! Oh, 
wondrous tree ! oh, Christian faith ! oh, Chris- 
tian Church ! so small, so strong! what would 
the world be without thee ? What wouldst 
thou be without the world ? Grow on till in 
thy life the perfect union of the earth and 
heaven, of God and man, shall be complete ! 

V. 278. 



212 JULY 30. 

T^HERE is as yet no culture, no method of 
1 progress known to men, that is so rich 
and complete as that which is ministered by a 
truly great friendship. No natural appetite, 
no artificial taste, no rivalry of competition, 
no contagion of social activity, calls out such a 
large, healthy, symmetrical working of a human 
nature, as the constant, half-unconscious power 
of a friend's presence whom we thoroughly re- 
spect and love. In a true friendship there 
is emulation without its jealousy ; there is imi- 
tation without its servility. When one friend 
teaches another by his present life, there is 
none of that divorce of truth from feeling, and 
of feeling from truth, which in so many of the 
world's teachings makes truth hard, and feel- 
ing weak; but truth is taught, and feeling is 
inspired, by the same action of one nature on 
the other, and they keep each other true and 
warm. n. 54 . 

My careful heart was free again, 

O friend, my bosom said, 

Through thee alone the sky is arched, 

Through thee the rose is red ; 

All things through thee take nobler form, 

And look beyond the earth, 

The mill-round of our fate appears 

A sun-path in thy worth. 

Me too thy nobleness has taught 

To master my despair ; 

The fountains of my hidden life 

Are through thy friendship fair. 

Emerson. 



JULY 31. 213 



" HE who does not lose his reason in certain 
11 things," says Lessing, "has none to 
lose." But the reason is lost, not by any palsy 
or death that falls on it, but by the vehement life 
of will and affections, among which the life of 
the reason takes its true place as but one mem- 
ber of the perfect whole. 

There is a noble passage of Wordsworth 
which tells this same story, and shows how 
under the greatest influences of nature the same 
rich blending of the life takes place. He is 
describing the consecrating effects of early 
dawn : 

" What soul was his when from the naked top 
Of some bold headland he beheld the sun 
Rise up and bathe the world in light. He looked — 
Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth 
And ocean's liquid mass, beneath him lay 
In gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touched 
And in their silent faces did he read 
Unutterable love. Sound needed not 
Nor any voice of joy ; his spirit drank 
The spectacle ; sensation, soul, and form 
All melted into him. They swallowed up 
His animal being ; in them did he live 
And by them did he live. They were his life. 
In such access of mind, in such high hour 
Of visitation from the Living God, 
Thought was not ; in enjoyment it expired. 
No thanks he breathed, he proffered no request ; 
Rapt into still communion that transcends 
The imperfect offices of prayer and praise, 
His mind was a thanksgiving to the Power 
That made him ; it was blessedness and love ! *' 

Influence, 225,230. 



214 AUGUST i. 



The mountains shall bring peace to the people, 
and the little hills, by righteousness. — Ps. lxxii. 3. 

f^ HR1ST set men close to God, to their true 
selves, to the souls of their brethren, to 
the immensity of duty ; and He said to them 
there, what there they understood, "Be 
humble! " 

It was as if He took a proud, fretful man out 
of the worrying life of the selfish city and set 
him among the solemn mountains, and the 
mountains brought to him the blessed peace of 
humility and the sense of his own insignifi- 
cance. L 351 . 

RETURN TO THE HILLS. 

Ah ! with boldness of lovers who wed 

I make haste to your feet, 
And as constant as lovers who die, 

My surrender repeat ; 
And I take as the right of my love, 

And I keep as its sign, 
An ineffable joy in each sense 

And new strength as from wine, 
A seal for all purpose and hope, 

And a pledge of full light, 
Like a pillar of cloud for my day, 

And of fire for my night. 

Helen Hunt Jackson. 



AUGUST 2. 215 

Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the 
temple of my God : and he shall go no more out. 

Rev. iii. 12. 

SLOWLY, through all the universe, that 
temple of God is being built. Wherever, 
in any world, a soul, by free-willed obedience, 
catches the fire of God's likeness, it is set into 
the growing walls, a living stone .... In 
what strange quarries and stone-yards the 
stones for that celestial wall are being hewn ! 
Out of the hillsides of humiliated pride ; deep 
in the darkness of crushed despair ; in the 
fretting and dusty atmosphere of little cares ; 
in the hard, cruel contacts that man has with 
man ; wherever souls are being tried and ri- 
pened, in whatever commonplace and homely 
ways; — there God is hewing out the pillars 
for His temple. O, if the stone can only have 
some vision of the temple of which it is to lie 
a part forever, what patience must fill it as it 
feels the blows of the hammer, and knows that 
success for it is simply to let itself be wrought 
into what shape the Master wills. Um 71t 72 . 



Whereas on earth 
Temples and palaces are formed of parts 
Costly and rare, but all material, 
So in the world of spirits nought is found, 
To mould withal and form into a whole, 
But what is immaterial ; and thus 
The smallest portions of this edifice, 
Cornice, or frieze, or balustrade, or stair, 
The very pavement is made up of life — 
Of holy, blessed, and immortal beings, 
Who hymn their Maker's praise continually. 

John Henry Newman. 



216 AUGUST 3. 



Thou art a gentle and most loving Lamb, 

Wounded to give us balm ; 
And still, wherever sin doth reign, 

Thou day by day art slain. 
When will man cease to give Thee pain? 

Anna E. Hamilton. 



\A/E come to the profoundest knowledge and 
W the profoundest hatred of sin when we 
come to this, that it crucified the Son of God 
with wicked men, it made Jesus the sharer of 
our human woe. Sin did this. Whose sin ? 
What sin? Then it is that the terrible identity 
of sin comes out. Here in the presence of 
God's suffering and dying Son the oneness of 
God's family is clear. All that we have ever 
done that has helped to make the world a dif- 
ferent place from that holy ground on which 
the Holy God might have walked in perfect 
sympathy with His obedient children, all our 
wilfulness, all our disobedience, all our un- 
truth, all our passion, all our lust, all our self- 
ishness, all our wickednesses which we call 
little wickednesses at home or in the street, 
they all take their place in, they all declare 
their oneness with, that sin which brought 
Christ to the cross. 1. 20I , 202. 

Lord, if Thy wounds have filled the world with peace, 
What shall Thy joy do, when all sin shall cease, 
And the new earth shall yield her full increase ! 

Caroline M. Noel. 



AUGUST 4. 217 



/ will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, 
and your joy 710 man taketh from you. 

John xvi. 22. 

TT was a special joy, the inmost, the most 
A secret and sacred of all joys which their 
Master promised. Not for those disciples more 
than for other men was nature to be changed, 
or their relations with their fellow-men to be 
robbed of the power of painfulness. . . . Still, 
just as before Christ gave them His promise, 
their reverence was shocked, their love was 
wounded, their trust was betrayed, their mo- 
tives were misjudged by fellow-men. But 
behind all this His words revealed to them a 
self out of men's power, something which no 
fellow-man could touch. . . . There is noth- 
ing at all of self-sufficiency in what is prom- 
ised. It is not that these men are to develop 
some interior strength, or to drift into some 
region of calm indifference where the influ- 
ences of their fellow-men shall not touch them 
any longer. It is that they are to come to a 
new life with Him. The new joy which is 'to 
enter into them, which they are to enter into, 
is to be distinctly a joy of relationship and not 
of self-containment, a joy which is to escape 
the invasion of the men who disturb all other 
joys by being held in the hand of a stronger 
being out of which no earthly power shall be 
able to pluck it away. 111. 22Q , 294 . 



218 AUGUST 5. 



How can this man give us His flesh to eat? 

John vi. 52. 

HOW can He ? Certainly He can if you 
will go to Him and pray to Him and love 
Him and obey Him and receive Him. And 
what a strength comes of that holy feeding ! 
Where is the task that terrifies the man who 
lives by Christ ? Where is the discourage- 
ment over which he will not walk to go to 
the right which he must reach ? You may 
starve him, but he has this inner food. You 
may darken his life, but he has this inner 
light. You may make war about him, but he 
has this peace within. You may turn the world 
into a hell, but he carries his inner heaven 
safely through its fiercest fires. He is like 
Christ Himself. He has meat to eat that we 
know not of, and in the strength of it he over- 
comes at last and is conqueror through his 
Lord. 11.251,252. 

'Twas August, and the fierce sun overhead 
Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green, 
And the pale weaver, through his windows seen 
In Spitalfields, look'd thrice dispirited. 

I met a preacher there I knew, and said : 

' 111 and o'erwork'd, how fare you in this scene? ' — 

' Bravely ! ' said he ; ' for I of late have been 

Much cheer'd with thoughts of Christ, the living bread.' 

O human soul ! as long as thou canst so 
Set up a mark of everlasting light, 
Above the howling senses' ebb and flow, 

To cheer thee, and to right thee if thou roam — 
Not with lost toil thou laborest through the night ! 
Thou mak'st the heaven thou hop'st indeed thy home. 

Matthew Arnold. 



AUGUST 6. 219 



We were eye-witnesses of His majesty. 

IL Pet. i. 16. 

TN many respects this story (of the Trans- 
1 figuration) belongs beside the story of the 
Temptation. The two mountains are the com- 
plements of one another. As the Temptation 
was the typical utterance of the perplexed 
conditions of human living, so the Transfigu- 
ration was the irrepressible utterance of the 
essential glory of human nature filled with 
divinity, reclaimed and openly asserted to be 
the Son of God. And in the Transfiguration, 
as in the Temptation, the body has its share. 
Not merely does the soul enjoy sublime con- 
verse with God and with the past. A sweet 
and awful gladness shines out from the face 
and hands, and even pierces from the hidden 
limbs through the coarse garments which 
shine "white as the light." I do not know 
the meaning of it all, but I know that what 
came to the spiritual came in some echo to the 
physical, and the body shared the gladness 

Of the SOul. Influence, 160. 

O God, who on the mount didst reveal to chosen 
witnesses thine only-begotten Son wonderfully trans- 
figured, in raiment white and glistering; Mercifully 
grant that we, being delivered from the disquietude of 
this world, may be permitted to behold the King in his 
beauty, who with thee, O Father, and thee, O Holy 
Ghost, liveth and reigneth, one God, world without 
end. Book of Common Prayer. 



220 AUGUST 7. 



I knotu how to abound. — Phil. iv. 12. 

TIMES (of great spiritual abundance) have 
their very deep and subtle dangers. . . . 
Many a Christian has failed just there. Soon 
the great light, unused, has faded away and 
left the soul in darkness. Soon peace which 
was not vitalized to power has decayed to 
pride. Something of this kind has come, 1 
think, to whole generations, to whole periods 
of Christianity. But see ! If you lift up your 
head, if you put out your hand and take your 
task, which certainly is waiting for you, then 
instantly your high emotions know their place. 
They turn themselves to motives. They be- 
come the necessary habits of the life. They 
prove their reality by what they can make 
you strong to do. . . . Let no spiritual exal- 
tation come to you without your lifting your- 
self up in its present power, and doing some 
work for God which in your weaker moments 
and lower moods has scared you with its diffi- 
culty. For duty is the only tabernacle within 
which a man can always make his home upon 
the transfiguration mountain. v. 156. 

Hark, hark, a voice amid the quiet intense ! 
It is thy Duty waiting thee without. 
Rise from thy knees, in hope, the half of doubt ; 
A hand doth pull thee — it is Providence ; 
Open thy door straightway and get thee hence ; 
Go forth into the tumult and the shout ; 
Work, love, with workers, lovers, all about : 
Of noise alone is born the inward sense 
Of silence ; and from action springs alone 
The inward knowledge of true love and faith. 

George MacDonald. 



AUGUST 8. 221 



TOO often have the minds both of religious 
and of irreligious men conceived of God 
as the great hinderer of human knowledge. 
Even those men who thought they honored 
Him supremely have talked about Him as if 
He loved the darkness ; they have dwelt upon 
mystery as if it were something which God 
treasured, and which His children were to 
treasure for itself, as if they did not wish it 
cleared up and made light. They have imag- 
ined Him almost standing guard over whole 
regions of knowledge and forbidding them to 
the impatient intellect of man. That is not 
the idea of David ; that is not the idea of the 
Bible anywhere. Against all the folly of the 
Church, and all the ignorance of unbelief 
which declares that God is darkness, stands 
up the protest of John, who cries, "God is 
light, and in Him is no darkness at all ; " and 
the glowing ascription of the light-loving David, 
who declares, " In thy light, O Lord, we shall 
see light." 111.94,95- 

O Thou, who by the light of nature dost enkindle in 
us a desire after the light of grace, that by this Thou 
mayest translate us into the light of glory, — I give 
Thee thanks, O Lord and Creator, that Thou hast 
gladdened me by Thy creation when I was enraptured 
by the work of Thy hands. 

John Kepler. 



222 AUGUST 9. 



THE vital principle is too spiritual to be 
confined to one form. It passes from 
one form into another which is wholly differ- 
ent, and yet it remains essentially the same. 
The buried seed and the wheat waving in the 
sunshine are the same, and yet how differ- 
ent they are ! . . . There is a power of life 
which pervades the universe. Everywhere it 
is identical; everywhere it is glorious. It 
shines in everything. By it sun, moon, and 
stars are clothed with radiance. But how 
different is the splendor which it gives to 
each ! . . . Shall not then this human life, 
still keeping itself the same human life, be 
able to go up to heaven and stand in the light 
of God ? v. 58. 

I was only then 
Contented, when with bliss ineffable 
I felt the sentiment of Being spread 
O'er all that moves and all that seemeth still ; 
O'er all that, lost beyond the reach of thought 
And human knowledge, to the human eye 
Invisible, yet liveth to the heart ; 
O'er all that leaps and runs, and shouts and sings, 
Or beats the gladsome air ; o'er all that glides 
Beneath the wave, yea, in the wave itself, 
And mighty depth of waters. Wonder not 
If high the transport, great the joy I felt 
Communing in this sort through earth and heaven 
With every form of creature, as it looked 
Towards the Uncreated with a countenance 
Of adoration, with an eye of love. 

Wordsworth. 



AUGUST 10. 223 



NOW under all outward rebellion and wick- 
edness, there is in every man who ought 
to be a friend of God, and that means every 
man whom God has made, a need of reconcili- 
ation. To get back to God, that is the strug- 
gle. The soul is Godlike and seeks its own. 
It wants its Father. There is an orphanage, a 
homesickness of the heart which has gone up 
into the ear of God, and called the Saviour, the 
Reconciler, to meet it by His wondrous life and 
death. I, for my part, love to see in every 
restlessness of man's moral life everywhere, 
whatever forms it takes, the struggles of this 
imprisoned desire. The reason may be rebel- 
lious, and vehemently cast aside the whole 
story of the New Testament, but the soul is 

never wholly at its rest away from God. 

11. 104. 

None other Lamb, none other Name, 
None other Hope in heaven or earth or sea, 

None other Hiding-place from guilt and shame, 
None beside Thee. 

My faith burns low, my hope burns low, 
Only my heart's desire cries out in me ; 

By the deep thunder of its want and woe, 
Cries out to Thee. 

Lord, Thou art Life, tho' I be dead, 
Love's Fire Thou art however cold I be : 

Nor heaven have I, nor place to lay my head, 
Nor home, but Thee. 

Christina Rossetti. 



224 AUGUST ii. 



/ therefoi'e, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you, 
that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye 
are called. 

Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of 
the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect 
man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness 
of Christ. — Eph. iv. i, 13. 

MEAN to be something with all your might. 
Do not add act to act and day to day in 
perfect thoughtlessness, never asking yourself 
whither the growing line is leading. But at 
the same time do not dare to be so absorbed in 
your own life, so wrapped up in listening to 
the sound of your own hurrying wheels, that 
all this vast pathetic music, made up of the 
mingled joy and sorrow of your fellow-men, 
shall not find out your heart and claim it and 
make you rejoice to give yourself for them. 
And yet, all the while, keep the upward win- 
dows open. Do not dare to think that a child 
of God can worthily work out his career or 
worthily serve God's other children unless he 
does both in the love and fear of God their 
Father. Be sure that ambition and charity 
will both grow mean unless they are both 
inspired and exalted by religion. Energy, 

love, and faith, those make the perfect man. 

11. 126. 



AUGUST 12. 225 



Great Universe — what dost thou with thy dead ! 
Now thinking on the myriads that have gone 
Into a seeming blank oblivion, 
With here and there a most resplendent head, — 

Eyes of such trancing sweetness, or so dread, 
That made the soul to quake who looked thereon, — 
All utterly wiped out, dismissed and done : 
Lost, speechless, viewless, and forever fled ! 

Myriad on myriad, past the power to count, — 
Where are they, thou dumb Nature? Do they shine, 
Released from separate life, in summer airs, 

On moony seas, in dawns ; — or up the stairs 
Of spiritual being slowly mount 
And by degrees grow more and more divine? 

Richard Watson Gilder. 

THERE are so many souls. What world 
can hold them all ? What care can rec- 
ognize, and cover, and embrace them all ? If 
there only were not so many of us ! The 
thought of one's own immortality sinks 
like a tired soldier on a battle-field, over- 
whelmed and buried under the multitude of 
the dead. Have not many of you felt this 
bewilderment ? . . . What can we say to 
it? How can we grasp and believe in this 
countless army of immortals who come swarm- 
ing up out of all the lands and all the ages ? 
There is only one way. Multiply numbers as 
enormously as you will, and the result is finite 
still. Then set the finite, however large, 
into the presence of the infinite, and it is 
small. Its limitations show. There is no 
finite, however vast, that can overcrowd the 
infinite ; none that the infinite cannot most 
easily grasp and hold. . . . Here must be 
the real solution of our difficulty, in the infinity 
°f God. IV . 6 9 , 70. 



226 AUGUST 13. 



Deep calleth unto deep, — Ps. xlii. 17. 

'"THE words of David suggest to me also that 
* there is such a thing as deep calling unto 
shallow, — by which I mean, of course, the pro- 
found and sacred interests of life crying out and 
finding nothing but the slight and foolish and 
selfish parts of a man ready to reply. There are 
a host of men who . . . have perception enough 
to hear the great questions and see the great 
tasks ; but they have not earnestness and self- 
control enough to answer them with serious 
thought and strong endeavor ; so they sing their 
answer to the thunder, which is not satisfied or 
answered. That is what I mean by deep calling 
unto shallow. v. 243 . 

But ye who have seemed to know us, have seen and 
heard ; 
Who have set us at feasts and have crowned with 

the costly rose ; 
Who have spread us the purple of praises beneath 
our feet ; 
Yet guessed not the word that we spake was a living 
word, 
Applauding the sound, — we account you as worse 

than foes ! 
We sobbed you our message ; ye said, " It is song 
and sweet " ! 

Helen Gray Cone. 



AUGUST 14. 227 



Gird up the loins of your mind, be sober. 

I. Pet. i. 13. 
A merry heart doeth good like a medicine. 

Prov. xvii. 22. 

GRAVITY ... I mean simply that grave 
and serious way of looking at life which, 
while it never repels the true lightheadedness 
of pure and trustful hearts, welcomes into a 
manifest sympathy, the souls of men who are 
oppressed and burdened, anxious and full of 
questions which for the time at least have 
banished all laughter from their faces. . . . 
Gravity has a delicate power of discrimination. 
It attracts all that it can help and it repels all 
that could harm it or be harmed by it. It 
admits the earnest and simple with a cordial 
welcome. It shuts out the impertinent and 
insincere inexorably. 

The gravity of which I speak is not incon- 
sistent with the keenest perception of the 
ludicrous side of things. It is more than con- 
sistent with — it is even necessary to — humor. 
Humor involves the perception of the true 
proportions of life. ... It has softened the 
bitterness of controversy a thousand times. 
You cannot encourage it too much- You can- 
not grow too familiar with the books of all 
ages which have in them the truest humor, for 
the truest humor is the bloom of the highest 
life. Read George Eliot and Thackeray, and, 
above all, Shakespeare. They will help you 
to keep from extravagances without fading 
into insipidity. They will preserve your 
gravity while they save you from pompous 
solemnity. preaching, 5 4- 5 8. 



228 AUGUST 15. 

THE mountains to the Hebrew were always 
full of mystery and awe. They stood 
around the sunlit level of his daily life robed in 
deep clouds, the home of wandering winds, 
flowing down with waters, trembling, as it 
seemed, with the awful footsteps of God, 

They made indeed for him the background 
of all life, as they make the background of 
every landscape in which they stand. . . . The 
foreground of the plain-land rests upon the 
background of the hills. From them it gains 
its lights and shadows. The two depend on 
one another. ... To most men the actual 
immediate circumstances of life are so pressing 
that they forget the everlasting truths and 
forces by which those circumstances must be 
made dignified and strong. Then must come 
something like the cry of Amos the Prophet, 
" Lo, He that formeth the mountains, and 
createth the wind, and declareth unto man 
what is His Thought, that maketh the morn- 
ing darkness and treadeth upon the high places 
of the earth." Is there not in these words, 
dimly but very grandly and majestically set 
forth, the great suggestion of the divine back- 
ground of all life ? It is the same which Ten- 
nyson has pictured in the Vision of Sin : 

" At last I heard a voice upon the slope 
Cry to the summit, ' Is there any hope? ' 
To which an answer pealed from that high land, 
But in a tongue no man could understand ; 
And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn 
God made Himself an awful rose of Dawn." 

V. 106, 108. 



AUGUST 16. 229 



THINK of sin as a mistake, or as an incon- 
venience, and you stand in great danger, 
first, of compromising with it, and second, of 
using low and even sinful methods of opposing 
it. But think of sin as a frightful wrong in 
itself, a blot and curse in the universe of God, 
and you grow at once absolutely intolerant of 
it, and at the same time watchfully anxious 
about the nature of the weapons which you 
shall use to fight it with. . . . Only when 
pity for it joins with horror at it in our hearts, 
as they join in the heart of God, each keeping 
the other strong and pure, only then can we 
go out to meet it with a perfect determination, 
bound never to lay down our arms so long as 
there is any sin left in the world ; and at the 
same time, with an absolute conviction that no 
impatience to rid the world of sin must tempt 
us for a moment to use any means for its de- 
struction which are not pure and just; an 
absolute conviction that it is better that sin 
should be left master of the field, than that it 
should be fought with sin. iv. 27 i, 272 . 

But if we strove to stand in battle line like soldiers 

true, 
Above us we should see God's help descending from 

the sky. 
Ready is He to help all those that fight, 
And build their hopes upon His kindliness. 
He makes for us chances to fight — that we may win. 

Thomas A Kempis. 



230 AUGUST 17. 



1VTEVER, no matter how long exclusion from 
the presence of God may seem to last, 
though it go on year after year and you are 
growing old in your seeming orphanhood ; 
never accept it, never make up your mind to 
it that it is right ; never cease to expect that 
the doors will fly open and you will be admitted 
to all the joy of your Father's felt love and of 
unhindered communion with Him. Never lose 
out of your soul's sight the seat which is set 
for you in the very sanctuary of divine love. 
And what beside ? Seek even more deeply 
the satisfaction which is in your consecration 
itself ; and that you may find it, consecrate 
yourself more and more completely. 1. 30> 3I . 



And should the twilight darken into night, 

And sorrow grow to anguish, be thou strong ; 

Thou art in God, and nothing can go wrong 
Which a fresh life-pulse cannot set aright. 
That thou dost know the darkness, proves the light. 

Weep if thou wilt, but weep not all too long ; 

Or weep and work, for work will lead to song. 

George MacDonald. 



AUGUST 18. 231 



IT is a strange perplexing fact of life, this 
fact that as a being or a work, which has 
seemed perfect in some lower region, goes up 
to some higher region, it seems to grow imper- 
fect ; at least it manifests its imperfection. We 
can see at once what a temptation it must 
offer to the human powers to linger in some 
lower sphere, in which they seem to be equal 
to their work, instead of going freely up into a 
loftier world where they shall learn their lim- 
itations and their feebleness. There is reason 
enough to fear that man's power of thought, 
revelling to-day in the clearness with which it 
seems to see the lower world of physical exist- 
ence, will refuse some of the higher duties 
which belong to it, the duties which most tax 
its capacity and show its feebleness, the duties 
of understanding the soul of man and reaching 
after the comprehension of God. Sad will it 
be if it is so ; if studious humanity, delighted 
with its achievements in the mere region of 
physical research, shall turn its back on the 
lofty tasks in which man's intellect finds its 
greatest glory as well as its most complete 
humility — -the struggle to know God. 

III. 206, 207« 

Thou art so great, that the greatest powers and 
minds, which Thou couldest create, would all together 
contain but a little of Thee. And yet Thou wiliest that 
such as I should adore Thee and know Thee, and in all 
eternity love Thee. Pusey. 



232 AUGUST 19. 



" Because we are sons, God has sent the spirit of 
His Son into our hearts " 

DECAUSE we are sons, His Son Himself 
*-) could take our nature upon Him. The 
more truly we believe in the Incarnate Deity, 
the more devoutly we must believe in the es- 
sential glory of humanity, the more earnestly 
we must struggle to keep the purity and integ- 
rity and largeness of our own human life, and 
to help our brethren to keep theirs. It is be- 
cause the divine can dwell in us that we may 
have access to divinity. 1. 240) 24I . 

Lord, carry me. — Nay, but I grant thee strength 
To walk and work thy way to Heaven at length. — 

Lord, why then am I weak? — .Because I give 
Power to the weak, and bid the dying live. — 

Lord, I am tired. — He hath not much desired 
The goal, who at the starting-point is tired. — 

Lord, dost thou know? — I know what is in man ; 
What the flesh can, and what the spirit can. — 

Lord, dost thou care? — Yea, for thy gain or loss 
So much I cared, it brought me to the Cross. — 

Lord, I believe ; help Thou mine unbelief. — 
Good is the word ; but rise, for life is brief. 
The follower is not greater than the Chief : 
Follow thou Me along My way of grief. 

Christina Rossetti. 



AUGUST 20. 233 



REST in expectation we may all have now 
if we believe in God and know we are 
His children. Every taste of Him that we 
have ever had becomes a prophecy of His 
perfect giving of Himself to us. It is as when 
a pool lies far up in the dry rocks, and hears 
the tide and knows that her refreshment and 
replenishing is coming. How patient she is. 
The other pools nearer the shore catch the sea 
first, and she hears them leaping and laughing, 
but she waits patiently. She knows the tide 
will not turn back till it has reached her. And 
by and by the blessed moment comes. The 
last ridge of rock is overwashed. The stream 
pours in ; at first a trickling thread sent only at 
the supreme effort of the largest wave ; but by 
and by the great sea in its fulness. It gives 
the waiting pool itself and she is satisfied. So 
it will certainly be with us if we wait for the 
Lord, however He delays, and refuse to let 
ourselves be satisfied with any supply but 
Him. IL 286. 

As torrents in summer, 
Half dried in their channels, 
Suddenly rise, though the 
Sky is still cloudless, 
For rain has been falling 
Far off at their fountains ; 

So hearts that are fainting 
Grow full to o'erflowing, 
And they that behold it 
Marvel, and know not 
That God at their fountains 
Far off has been raining ! 

Longfellow. 



234 AUGUST 21. 



"T O, I am with you alway," Christ de- 
^ clares. And souls to-day, many and 
many of your souls, my friends, have found 
the rich fulfilment of His promise. Sometimes 
it comes to us with a strange surprise When 
we are living on as if we lived alone, when we 
are sitting working silently in some still room 
which we think is empty but for our own 
presence, when we are busy in some work 
which seems as if it were our work, to be done 
as we should please ; slowly, sweetly, surely 
we become aware of a richer presence which 
is truly with us, of a love which enfolds us, 
and an authority which controls us. We are 
not alone. The work is not our work but His. 
The strength to do it with is not to be called 
up out of the depths of ourselves, but taken 
down from the heights of Him. The room is 
full, the world is full of Jesus. He is doing 
what He said He would do. He is with us as 
He said He would be. , ni. 297 . 



Thy calmness bends serene above, 

My restlessness to still ; 
Around me flows Thy quickening life 

To nerve my faltering will ; 
Thy presence fills my solitude : 
Thy providence turns all to good. 

Samuel Longfellow. 



AUGUST 22. 235 



IF you must pass through what is even a desert 
to get to fertile, smiling lands beyond, still 
it is not good to count even the desert a mere 
necessary evil to be got through and forgotten 
as soon as possible. It is good as you plod 
through the sand to feed your eyes with the 
vastness and simplicity of the world which the 
monotony of sky and sand can most impressively 
display to you. So if God has appointed to any 
of us times of solitude and friendlessness, — 
perhaps times of unpopularity and neglect, — 
let us pray that we may not pass through them, 
however dreary they may be, without bringing 
out from them greater conceptions of Him and 
of our fellow-men and of ourselves. v . i 72 , i 73 . 

A dreary desert dost thou trace, 

And quaff a bitter bowl ? 
The desert make thy Holy Place ; 

Sing as thou drinkest, Soul ! 
Or walkest thou 'neath shining skies, 

A garden all the road ? 
Sing, Soul, and make thy paradise 

The Paradise of God ! 

T. H. Gill. 

Oh, my young friends, prosperous and happy, 
with life all full of hope and chance and light, 
... no lot is too rich for a soul that enters into 
it full of humility before God, and love for 
fellow-men, and a deep desire for holiness. 

V. 156. 



236 AUGUST 23. 



And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled 
with fire , and them that had gotten the victory over 
the beast . . . stand on the sea of glass, having 
the harps of God. — Rev. xv. 2. 

" T^HEY who have gotten the victory over 
* the Beast" are they who have come 
out of sin holy, and out of trial pure, and out 
of much tribulation have entered into the king- 
dom of heaven. 

These are to walk upon " a sea of glass, 
mingled with fire." What does that imagery 
mean? The sea of glass, the glassy sea, with 
its smooth transparency settled into solid still- 
ness without a ripple or the possibility of a 
storm, calm, clear, placid — evidently that is 
the type of repose, of rest, of peace. And 
fire, with its quick, eager, searching nature, 
testing all things, consuming what is evil, puri- 
fying what is good, never resting a moment, 
never sparing pain ; fire, all through the Bible, 
is the type of active trial of every sort, of 
struggle. "The fire shall try every man's 
work of what sort it is." " The sea of glass," 
then, " mingled with fire," is repose mingled 
with struggle. It is peace and rest and achieve- 
ment, with the power of trial and suffering 
yet alive and working within it. It is calm- 
ness still pervaded by the discipline through 
which it has been reached. iv. II2 . 



AUGUST 24. 237 



Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him. 

Job xiii. 16. 

^O stand with the good things of life all 
stripped away, to stand beaten and buf- 
feted by storms of disaster and disappointment, 
to stand with all our brethren saying, "Behold, 
how God hates him," and yet to know as- 
suredly in our own hearts that God loves us, 
to know it so assuredly, with the intercourse 
that lies between our heart and His, that we 
can freely let go the outward tokens of His love, 
as the most true and trusty friends do not need 
to take gifts from one another for assurance of 
their affection, — this surely is the perfection of 
a faithful life. It is the gathering up of ail hap- 
pinesses into one happiness which is so rich that 
it can live without them all, and yet regally 
receives them into itself as the ocean receives 
the rivers. 

V. 320 

Thou, Lord, alone, art all Thy children need, 

And there is none beside ; 
From Thee the streams of blessedness proceed, 

In Thee the blest abide, — 
Fountain of life, and all-abounding grace, 
Our source, our centre, and our dwelling-place. 

Madame Guyon. 



238 AUGUST 25, 

With brain o'erworn, with heart a summer clod, 
With eye so practised in each form around, — 
And all forms mean, — to glance above the ground 
Irks it, each day of many days we plod, 
Tongue-tied and deaf, along life's common road. 
But suddenly, we know not how, a sound 
Of living streams, an odour, a flower crowned 
With dew, a lark upspringing from the sod, 
And we awake. O joy and deep amaze ! 
Beneath the everlasting hills we stand, 
We hear the voices of the morning seas, 
And earnest prophesyings in the land, 
While from the open heaven leans forth at gaze 
The encompassing great cloud of witnesses. 

Edward Dowden. 

T IFE is always opening new and unexpected 
^ things to us. There is no monotony in 
living to him who walks even the quietest and 
tamest paths with open and perceptive eyes. 
The monotony of life, if life is monotonous to 
you, is in you, not in the world. ... It is 
God, and the discovery of Him in life, and the 
certainty that He has plans for our lives and is 
doing something with them, that gives us a 
true, deep sense of movement, and lets us al- 
ways feel the power and delight of unknown 
coming things. v 288, 289, 



AUGUST 26. 239 



HTHE Church has in herself the very doctrine 
of tradition. She teaches the child a faith 
that has the warrant of the ages, full of devotion 
and of love. She calls on him to believe doc- 
trines of which he cannot be convinced as yet. 
The tradition, the hereditation of belief, the 
unity of the human history, are ideas very 
familiar to her, of which she constantly and 
beautifully makes use. And yet she does not 
disown her work of teaching and arguing and 
convincing. She cannot, and yet be true to her 
mission. She teaches the young with the voice 
of authority ; she addresses the mature with the 
voice of reason. Let her give up the first func- 
tion, and her assemblies would turn into mere 
societies of debate. Let her abandon the second, 
and they must be blighted with some doctrine of 
infallibility. L67 . 

We beseech Thine Omnipotence, Holy God, Father 

Almighty, that Thou wouldst fill us with the gift of 

Thine Only-begotten Son, and the ineffable blessing, 

visitation, and life-giving power of Thine and His Holy 

Spirit, whereby Thy Church, enkindled with His fire. 

may hold the true faith in Him from Whom she receives 

all truth. 

Ancient Collects. Bright. 



240 AUGUST 27. 



T^HE world does say to us, " Enjoy; " and 
1 it is good for us to hear her invitation. 
But for the world to say, and for us to hear, 
nothing better or deeper than " Enjoy " is to 
turn the relation between the world and man 
into something hardly better than that which 
exists between the corn-field and the crows. It 
is clothing one's self with cobwebs. Only when 
the deeper communion, rich and full and strong, 
is going on below, between the depths of life 
and the depths of man, — only then is the sur- 
face communion healthy and natural and good. 
He who is always hearing and answering the 
call of life to be thoughtful and brave and self- 
sacrificing, — he alone can safely hear the other 
cry of life, tempting him to be happy and enjoy. 

V. 242. 

And the dreamer saw the sorrow and he heard the 

bitter cries, 
And he left his dreams of morning, and his Earthly 

Paradise ; 

And he changed his lyre of music for the bugle of the 

fight, 
And he sounded forth his challenge to the myrmidons 

of Night, 

To the tyrant and oppressor who had done the people 

wrong, 
While he led the marching millions with the summons 

of his song. 

Allen Eastman Cross. 



AUGUST 28. 241 



WITH our modern, half-personal, unreal- 
ized ideas of Jesus, it must always 
be striking — sometimes it is startling — to 
remember that there was one little district 
of a few miles square upon the surface of 
this earth, which was known as "His own 
country.' ' That little group of hills with the 
quiet valleys among them which lies between 
Nazareth and the Sea of Tiberias, He loved 
as we love the streets or farms where we 
were born. And not very far off to the south- 
ward lay the great city of His race, where His 
feet never seemed to enter except solemnly. 

Influence, 130. 



This is the earth he walked on ; not alone 
That Asian country keeps the sacred stain ; 
'Tis not alone the far Judaean plain, 
Mountain and river ! Lo, the sun that shone 

On him shines now on us ; when day is gone 
The moon of Galilee comes forth again 
And lights our path as his : an endless chain 
Of years and sorrows makes the round world one. 

The air we breathe, he breathed, — the very air 
That took the mold and music of his high 
And godlike speech. — Since then shall mortal dare 

With base thought front the ever-sacred sky, — 
Soil with foul deed the ground whereon he laid 
In holy death his pale, immortal head. 

Richard Watson Gilder. 



242 AUGUST 29. 



" \I7HY 'cannot I follow thee now? Why 
W this delay of the divinest life? 
Why so much duty with so little strength ? 
Why only the journey and the hunger and 
the thirst, without the brook of refreshment 
by the way ?" No man can wholly answer 
these questions, but multitudes of saints, if 
they could speak, would tell you how in their 
hindered lives God kept them true to such 
experience as they had attained ; and so it 
was that, by and by, either before or after the 
great enlightenment of death, the hindrance 
melted away, and they who had been crying 
for years, " Lord, why cannot we follow thee 
now?" passed forth into the multitude of 
those who "follow the Lamb whithersoever 
He goeth." i. 3I , 32 . 

For who that leans on His right arm 
Was ever yet forsaken ? 
What righteous cause can suffer harm 
If He its part has taken ? 

Though wild and loud 

And dark the cloud 

Behind its folds 

His hand upholds 
The calm sky of to-morrow. 



God give us grace 
Each in his place 
To bear his lot, 
And murmuring not 
Endure and wait and labor. 

Luther. 



AUGUST 30. 243 



Ga?naliel said unto them . . . Refrain from 
these men and let them alone : for if this counsel or 
this work be of men, it will come to nought : but if 
it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it. — Acts v. 38. 

'""THERE are some men whose whole influence 
is to keep history open, so that whatever 
good thing is trying to get done in the world 
can get done ; not the doers of great things, but 
the men who help to keep the world so truly 
poised that good forces shall have a chance to 
work. These words of Gamaliel seem to point 
him out as being such a man. . . . Such 
men in our community, in our family circles, in 
our own little groups, whatever they are, any of 
us may be — men who shall do something to 
hold the soul of our little group in such ex- 
pectancy and readiness, in such unwillingness 
to settle down upon the imperfect present as a 
finality, that when the inspired word or deed 
shall come, as it is sure to come some time, it 
shall find the atmosphere ready to receive it and 
transmit it. We cannot make the wind to blow 
— it bloweth where it listeth; but we can keep 
the windows open, so that when it blows the 
chambered life about us shall not fail to receive 
its freshness. m. 253 , 255 . 



244 AUGUST 31. 



YOU have your cross, my friend. You do 
not serve your Lord without surrender. 
There is pain in the duty which you do. But 
if in all your pain you know that God's love is 
becoming a dearer and plainer truth to you, 
and that you are finding the pleasure of obey- 
ing God ; and that the vision of the world's 
redemption is growing more certain and bright, 
then you can be more than brave ; you can 
triumph in every task, in every sacrifice. 
Your cross has won something of the beauty 
and glory of your Lord's. Rejoice and be glad, 
for you are crucified with Christ. 1. 2oS . 



As flames that consume the mountains, as winds that 
coerce the sea, 

Thy men of renown show forth Thy might in the 
clutch of death : 

Down they go into silence, yet the Trump of the Jubi- 
lee 

Swells not Thy praise as swells it the breathless pause 
of their breath. 

What is the flame of their fire, if so I may catch the 

flame ; 
What is- the strength of their strength, if also I may 

wax strong? 
The flaming fire of their strength is the love of Jesu's 

Name, 
In Whom their death is life, their silence utters a song. 

Christina Rossetti. 



SEPTEMBER i. 245 



A I JE look forward into the opening months 
and ... if we have no religion (or do 
not use the religion which we have, as many 
religious men do not) we think of what will 
happen as the falling of accidents or as the ma- 
turing of self-ripening processes. If we think 
of it at all religiously, we talk about God send- 
ing messages to us. If our religion is a real live 
thing, we feel God actually coming to us Him- 
self, in all the unknown things which are to 
happen. . . . Ah, after all, that is every- 
thing. To know that there is no accident. To 
know that indeed there is no such thing as a 
mere message of God. To know that He is 
always coming to us, to know that there is 
nothing happening to us which is not His com- 
ing. To know all that, is to find the most trivial 
life made solemn, the most cruel life made kind, 
the most sad and gloomy life made rich and 
beautiful. iv. 3 6 5 , 3 66. 



From East to West, the God unshrined 

Is still discovering me. 

Edward Dowden. 



246 SEPTEMBER 2. 



Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life. 

John vi. 31. 

THE Lord's Supper, the right and need of 
every man to feed on God, the bread of 
divine sustenance, the wine of divine inspira- 
tion offered to every man, and turned by every 
man into what form of spiritual force the duty 
and the nature of each man required, how 
grand and glorious its mission might become! 
No longer the mystic source of unintelligible 
influence ; no longer certainly the test of ar- 
bitrary orthodoxy ; no longer the initiation rite 
of a selected brotherhood ; but the great sacra- 
ment of man ! . . . There is no other rallying- 
place for all the good activity and worthy hopes 
of man. It is in the power of the great Chris- 
tian Sacrament, the great human sacrament, 
to become that rallying-place. Think how it 
would be, if some morning all the men, women, 
and children in this city who mean well, from 
the reformer meaning to meet some giant evil 
at the peril of his life to the school boy mean- 
ing to learn his day's lesson with all his 
strength, were to meet in a great host at the 
table of the Lord, and own themselves His 
children, and claim the strength of His bread 
and wine, and then go out with calm, strong, 
earnest faces to their work. How the com- 
munion service would lift up its voice and sing 
itself in triumph, the great anthem of dedicated 
human life ! Ah, my friends, that, nothing less 
than that, is the real Holy Communion of the 
Church of the living God. iv. 4 6, 47,48, 



SEPTEMBER 3. 247 



IT seems very certain that the world is to grow 
better and richer in the future, however it 
has been in the past, not by the magnificent 
achievements of the highly-gifted few, but by 
the patient faithfulness of the one-talented many. 
If we could draw back the curtains of the mil- 
lennium and look in, we should see not a 
Hercules here and there standing on the world- 
wasting monsters he had killed ; but a world 
full of men each with an arm of moderate 
muscle, but each triumphant over his own little 
piece of the obstinacy of earth or the ferocity of 
the brutes. It seems as if the heroes had done 
almost all for the world that they can do, and 
not much more can come till common men 
awake and take their common tasks. I do 
believe the common man's task is the hardest. 
The hero has the hero's aspiration that lifts him 
to his labor. All great duties are easier than the 
little ones, though they cost far more blood and 
agony. ,. 14I . 

Is Heroism dead in this our day? 
No more rides forth in shining mail the knight, 
To do brave deeds in battle for the right, 
Or glitter in the tournament's array ; 
But has the noble heart burned out for aye 
Which kindled in those breasts such living fire? 
Nay, Virtue's flame may but more straight aspire 
With every breath of glory shut away. 
Who keep, 'mid bosom foes, their souls alive, 
Who furnish other's need at cost untold, 
With young hopes wounded, unapplauded strive, — 
Are they no knights? A Master said of old 
That Honor but from Service doth derive ; 
From Him their title comes, their rank they hold. 
' Harriet Ware Hall. 



248 SEPTEMBER 4. 



Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the 
name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and 
the Father by Him. Knowing that of the Lord ye 
shall receive the reward of the inheritance : for ye 
serve the Lord Christ. — Col. iii. 17, 24. 

J\ A AKE your business the centre and fountain 
* * * of your joy, and then life will be healthy 
and strong. Then you will not be running 
everywhere to find some outside pleasure 
which shall make up to you for your self-sacri- 
ficing toil ; but the scenes of your self-sacrific- 
ing toil itself, your store or your office or your 
work-bench, shall be bright with associations 
of delight, and vocal with your thankfulness 
to the God who has given you, in them, the 
most radiant revelations of Himself. This is 
the only true transfiguration and success of 
labor and of life. n. 33 . 



The mountain that the morn doth kiss 
Glad greets its shining neighbor ; 

Lord, heed the homage of our bliss, — 
The incense of our labor. 

Now the long shadows eastward creep, 

The golden sun is setting ; 
Take, Lord ! the worship of our sleep, — 

The praise of our forgetting. 

Richard Watson Gilder. 



SEPTEMBER 5. 249 



BE interested in some pursuit which will 
take you into quite unfamiliar fields. 
Make yourself at home in the Public Library, 
that great organ-forest of sweet and solemn 
and inspiring sounds, which will speak to us 
if we come and sit and are hungry for its 
music. Let the country, when you can, scat- 
ter the cobwebs of the city out of your brain 
and send you back to its richer life refreshed 
and simplified. Above all, let the peace of 
God, the peace of trust and love, the peace 
of religion, flow in upon your consciousness 
the moment that business care gives it a mo- 
ment's freedom. Whenever necessary thought 
of self gives way for an hour, O how good it 
is if the thought of the Father instantly, with- 
out waiting to be summoned, takes possession 
of the child. iv. 235 . 

Calm soul of all things ! make it mine 
To feel, amid the city's jar, 
That there abides a peace of thine, 
Man did not make, and cannot mar ! 

The will to neither strive nor cry, 
The power to feel with others give ! 
Calm, calm me more ! nor let me die 
Before I have begun to live. 

Matthew Arnold. 



250 SEPTEMBER 6. 



All things are yours ; whether Paul, or Apollos, 
or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or 
things present, or things to come; all are yours ; 
and ye ai'e Chris f s ; and Christ is God's. In 
i Fhom are hid all the treastires of wisdom and 
knowledge. — I. Cor. iii. 22, 23. Col. ii. 3. 



'"THE man who has gone on his way, as most 
1 of us have to do, with little learning, but 
has also gone on his way doing duty faithfully, 
developing all the practical skill that is in him, 
and sometimes, just because their details are so 
dark to him, getting rich visions of the general 
light and glory of the great sciences, seen afar 
off, seen as great wholes, which often seem to 
be denied to the plodders who spend their lives 
in the close study of those sciences, — he is the 
man who knows how to be unlearned. It is a 
blessed thing that there is such a knowledge 
possible for overworked, practical men. The 
man who has that knowledge may be self-re- 
spectful in the face of all the colleges. He may 
stand before the kings of learning and not be 
ashamed ; for his lot is as true a part of life as 
theirs, and he is bravely holding up his side of 
that great earth over which the plans of God 
are moving on to their completeness. v . 169. 



SEPTEMBER 7. 251 

My God! My God! Why hast Thou forsaken 
Me ? — Matt, xxvii. 46. 

'"THOUGH I do not understand this cry fully, 
I know that I come nearest to its mean- 
ing when its meaning seems to me most 
simple. It is pure love, — love thwarted, 
hindered, and perplexed, but yet pure love, 
with that triumph which love always carries 
in its very existence whether it reach its 
object and call back response or not. Jesus 
does not beg for release. He does not even 
ask for vindication. He only utters love. 

And that cry after His Father lets us look 
down into His heart and see that in loving 
His Father and being loved by Him was His 
perpetual joy. influence, i 77 . 

O Lord Jesus Christ, Who didst cry from the Cross 
to Thy Father, My God, My God, why hast Thou 
forsaken Me? and Who didst say to Thine Apostles, 
It is expedient for you that I go away : grant that, 
when we are forsaken for a while by Thee, we may 
not despair ; vouchsafe that, when we cannot see Thee 
to be with us, we may not utterly faint ; but possessing 
our souls in patience, may follow Thee in the night of 
Thy tribulation, till at length we behold the day of 
Thy glory. Book of Litanies. Neale. 



252 SEPTEMBER 8. 



T T may be that God used to give you plentiful 
chance to work for Him. Your days went 
singing by, each winged with some enthusiastic 
duty for the Master whom you loved. . . . 
You can be idle for Him, if so He wills, with 
the same joy with which you once labored for 
Him. The sick-bed or the prison is as welcome 
as the harvest-field or the battle-field, when 
once your soul has come to value as the end of 
life the privilege of seeking and of finding Him. 

V. 321, 322. 

O Lord, fulfil Thy Will 

Be the days few or many, good or ill : 

Prolong them, to suffice 

For offering up ourselves Thy sacrifice ; 

Shorten them if Thou wilt, 

To make in righteousness an end of guilt. 

Yea, they will not be long 

To souls who learn to sing a patient song : 

Yea, short they will not be 

To souls on tiptoe to flee home to Thee. 

O Lord, fulfil Thy Will : 

Make Thy Will ours, and keep us patient still 

Be the days few or many, good or ill. 

Christina Rossetti. 



SEPTEMBER 9. 253 

The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. 

John i. 14. 

THEN were the capacities of our human 
flesh declared. Then in the strong and 
healthy life of Jesus it was made known to 
what divine uses a strong body might be 
given. And since everything in this world 
properly belongs to the highest uses to which 
it may possibly be put, the strong human body 
was there declared to belong to righteousness 
and God. Thenceforward after Jesus and His 
life, wherever human flesh appeared at its 
best, wherever a human body stood forth 
specially strong, specially perfect and beauti- 
ful, it had the mark and memory of the Incar- 
nation on it. It might be totally perverted. 
It might be given to the Devil. But, since the 
work that Jesus did, the life that Jesus lived 
in a human body, the human body in its full- 
est vigor has belonged to the high work which 
He did in it, the service of God and help of 
fellow-man. Its vigor is His mark upon it. 
Feel this, and then how sacred becomes the 
body's health and strength. It is no chance, 
no luxury. God means that in it you should 
do work for Him. By it He claims you for 
His own. He to whom God has given it, is 
bound to have strong convictions, a live con- 
science, and intense earnest purposes of work. 

11. 366, 367. 



254 SEPTEMBER 10. 



Far better never to have heard the name 

Of zeal and just ambition, than to live 

Baffled and plagued by a mind that every hour 

Turns recreant to her task ; takes heart again, 

Then feels immediately some hollow thought 

Hang like an interdict upon her hopes. 

This is rny lot ; for either still I find 

Some imperfection in the chosen theme, 

Or see of absolute accomplishment 

Much wanting, so much wanting, in myself, 

That I recoil and droop, and seek repose 

In listlessness from vain perplexity, 

Unprofitably travelling toward the grave, 

Like a false steward who hath much received 

And renders nothing back. 

Wordsworth, 

A NY man who is good for anything, if he is 
always thinking about himself, will come 
to think himself good for nothing very soon. 
It is only a fop or a fool who can bear to look 
at himself all day long, without disgust. And 
so the first thing for a man to do, who wants 
to use his best powers at their best, is to get 
rid of self-consciousness, to stop thinking 
about himself and how he is working, alto- 
gether, i. I42 . 



SEPTEMBER ii. 255 

Do you dare to be 

Of the great majority? 

To be only as the rest, 

With Heaven's common comforts blessed ; 

To accept, in humble part, 

Truth that shines on every heart ; 

Never to be set on high, 

Where the envious curses fly ; 

Never name or fame to find, 

Still outstripped in soul and mind ; 

To be hid, unless to God, 

As one grass-blade in the sod, 

Under foot with millions trod ? 

If you dare, come, with us be 

Lost in Love's great unity ? E. R. Sill. 

If I feel God behind all existence, then there 
is a great identity established between all the 
utterances of Him throughout the length and 
breadth of human life. The volcanoes know 
each other, — Etna crying out to Vesuvius 
across the sea, — because of the oneness of the 
central fire from which they all proceed. Let 
me know God, the source of all that man does 
anywhere, and then, O poet, sing your song ! 
O sculptor, carve your statue ! O builder, build 
your house ! O engineer, roll out your railroad 
on the plain ! O sailor, sail your ship across the 
sea ! They are all mine. I am glad ; I am proud 
of them all. Is it not what Paul wrote so 
triumphantly to his disciples, — " All things are 
yours, and you are Christ's, and Christ is 
God's"? V . 70 , 7I . 



256 SEPTEMBER 12. 

Jesus said, Make the men sit down. 

John vi. to. 

HTHE disciples as well as the stragglers from 
1 Capernaum^ — perhaps the busy disciples 
more than anybody else in all the crowd — 
must have needed Christ's call to sit down 
and be fed. The more earnestly you are at 
work for Jesus, the more you need times when 
what you are doing for Him passes totally out 
of your mind, and the only thing worth think- 
ing of seems to be what He is doing for you. 
That is the real meaning of the days of dis- 
couragement and self-contempt which come to 
all of us, O fellow laborers for the Lord. 

God of all love and pity, 

Thy children gently guide ; 
With heavenly food supply us, 

All needful good provide. 

By waters still, refresh us ; 

As patiently we wait, 
Till Thou, the Fount of brightness, 

Our souls illuminate. 

Our wishes and affections, 

Our impulses and powers, 
We yield unto Thy guidance ; 

For they are Thine, not ours. 

With strong attraction draw us 

Unto Thyself alone, 
O King of Saints, and bring us 

Unto Thy sapphire throne. 

Caroline M. Noel. 



SEPTEMBER 13. 257 

MAKE your most simple act complete ; do 
your most common daily duty from its 
divinest motive, and what a change will come ! 
Still your life will need days of retirement, 
when it will shut the gates upon the noisy 
whirl of action and be alone with God. But 
it will not be upon them that it will mostly 
depend for spiritual nourishment. They will 
be like great exceptional banquets and ex- 
traordinary feasts of grace. The daily bread 
of spiritual life, the ordinary feeding of the 
soul on God, which really makes its sustenance, 
will be in the perpetual doing of the works of 
life for Him. The real sitting down to be fed 
will be mysteriously identical with the most 
eager and energetic standing on the feet to do 
His will ! 

IV, 238. 

Nothing remains to say to Thee, O Lord, 

I am confessed, 
All my lips' empty crying- Thou hast heard, 

My unrest, my rest. 
Why wait I any longer? Thou dost stay, 
And therefore, Lord, I would not go away. 

Then when Thou seekest Thy way, and I, mine, 

Let the World be 
Not wide and cold after this cherishing shrine 

Illum'd by Thee, 
Nay, but worth worship, fair, a radiant star, 
Tender and strong as Thy chief angels are. 

Edward Dowden. 



258 SEPTEMBER 14. 



Father, I will that they also, whoi?i Thou hast 
given me, be with me where I am. — John xvii. 24. 

THAT was Christ's prayer. He prayed it 
at the Passover table. The next day 
He prayed it in all the silent appeal of His 
suffering upon' the Cross. "I, if I be lifted 
up, will draw all men unto me." The cross 
was Christ's supreme utterance of His longing 
that all men might be rescued out of sin and 
brought to holiness. As we stand and see 
Him suffer, one thought, one cry alone arises 
in our hearts. Oh, how He must have wanted 
to save us ! How terrible sin must have 
seemed to Him ! How glorious holiness must 
have seemed, that such a prayer as this sacri- 
fice of Himself should thus have gone up to 
God for our salvation ! 1. 3I3 , , I4 . 

Be merciful, be gracious ; spare him, Lord. 
Be merciful, be gracious ; Lord, deliver him. 

From all that is evil ; 
From power of the devil ; 
Thy servant deliver, 
For once and forever. 

By Thy birth, and by Thy Cross, 

Rescue him from endless loss ; 

By Thy death and burial, 

Save him from a final fall ; 

By Thy rising from the tomb, 
By Thy mounting up above, 
By the Spirit's gracious love, 

Save him in the day of doom. 

John Henry Newman. 



SEPTEMBER 15. 259 



UNDER every discouragement, untouched by 
any scepticism or contempt of scornful 
friend or foe, there has lain at the bottom of the 
soul a conviction too deep for reason to give an 
account of, that this which seemed so impossible 
could be done. The soul could break through 
its selfishness, could despise danger and pain, 
could enter into communion with God. . . . 
But now what happened — one of the things 
which happened- — at the Incarnation was that 
this assurance, which had lain at the bottom of 
the human heart, came forth and was a living, 
manifest Being. It put on human flesh. It 
spoke with human lips. It worked with human 
hands. Christ was what man had felt in his 
soul that he might be. Christ did what man's 
heart had always told him that it was in his hu- 
manity to do. The new man which the old 
manhood had always felt struggling within itself 
came forth, and men knew themselves, their 
true selves, for the first time manifest in Him. 
This was what made man's hope thenceforth 
another thing. The stars at which men had 
guessed, knowing with, what they called cer- 
tainty that they were there, lo ! in the Incarna- 
tion they burned out visibly. IV . 2 8i, 2 s 2 . 

Shine, my only Day-star, shine : 
So mine eyes shall wake by Thine ; 
So the dreams I grope-in now 
To clear visions all shall grow ; 
So my day shall measured be 
By Thy Grace's clarity; 
So shall I discern the Path 
Thy sweet Law prescribed hath ; 
For Thy wavs cannot be shown 
By any light but by Thine own. 

Joseph Beaumont. 



26o SEPTEMBER 16. 



HOW every truth attains to its enlargement 
A 1 and reality in this great truth,— that 
the soul of man carries the highest possibilities 
within itself, and that what Christ does for it 
is to kindle and call forth these possibilities to 
actual existence. We do not understand the 
Church until we understand this truth. Seen 
in its light the Christian Church is nothing in 
the world except the promise and prophecy 
and picture of what the world in its idea is and 
always has been, and in its completion must 
visibly become. It is the primary crystalliza- 
tion of humanity. It is.no favored, elect body 
caught from the ruin, given a salvation in 
which the rest can have no part. It is an at- 
tempt to realize the universal possibility. All 
men are its potential members. The strange 
thing for any man is not that he should be 
within it, but that he should be without it. 
Every good movement of any most secular 
sort is a struggle toward it, a part of its ac- 
tivity. All the world's history is ecclesiastical 
history, is the story of the success and failure, 
the advance and hindrance of the ideal human- 
ity, the Church of the living God. Well may 
the prophet poet greet it, — 

" O heart of mine, keep patience ; looking forth 
As from the Mount of Vision I behold 
Pure, just, and free the Church of Christ on earch, — 
The martyr's dream, the golden age foretold." 

V. 15. 16. 



SEPTEMBER 17. 261 



T DLENESS standing in the midst of unat- 
* tempted tasks is always proud. Work is 
always tending to humility. Work touches 
the keys of endless activity, opens the infinite, 
and stands awe-struck before the immensity 
of what there is to do. Work brings a man 
into the good realm of facts. Work takes the 
dreamy youth who is growing proud in his 
closet over one or two sprouting powers which 
he has discovered in himself, and sets him out 
among the gigantic needs and the vast pro- 
cesses of the world, and makes him feel his 
littleness. Work opens the measureless fields 
of knowledge and skill that reach far out of 
sight. I am sure we all know the fine, calm, 
sober humbleness of men who have really 
tried themselves against the great tasks of life. 
It was great in Paul, and in Luther, and in 
Cromwell. It is something that never comes 
into the character, never shows in the face of 
a man who has never worked. j. 349> 350 . 

No man is born into the world, whose work 

Is not born with him ; there is always work, 

And tools to work withal, for those who will ; 

And blessed are the horny hands of toil ! 

The busy world shoves angrily aside 

The man who stands with arms akimbo set, 

Until occasion tells him what to do ; 

And he who waits to have his task marked out 

Shall die and leave his errand unfulfilled. 

James Russell Lowell. 



262 SEPTEMBER 18. 

OEGIN with largeness of thought, and with 
*-* positiveness of thought. The way in 
which a man begins' to think influences all his 
thinking to the end of his life. Begin by seek- 
ing for what is true, not for what is false, in the 
thought and belief which you find about you. 
Be as critical as you will, search as severely as 
you want to into the belief which offers itself 
for your acceptance, but let your search and 
criticism always have for its purpose that you 
may find what you may believe, not that you 
may find what you need not believe. Some 
things which your first thinking accepts, your 
riper thought may feel compelled to lay aside ; 
but the habit of believing once established will 
not be lost out of your life, and the young 
man's time is the time to make that habit. 
Scepticism is not merely the disbelief of some 
propositions. If it were that, there is not one 
of us but would be a sceptic. It is the habit 
and the preference of disbelieving. God save 
us all from that scepticism ! v. 101. 

Read much, learn much, 

Yet you must always come to one beginning — 
I am He 

That teaches man knowledge. 
I give a clearer understanding to the little ones 
Than can be given by man. 
I, even I, lift even in a flash the simple mind 
To understand more ways of the eternal truth 
Than if a man had studied in the schools ten years. 

Thomas a Kempis. 



SEPTEMBER 19. 263 



The length and the breadth and the height of 
it are equal. — Rev. xxi. 16. 

THE life which to its length and breadth 
adds height, which to its personal ambi- 
tion and sympathy with man adds the love 
and obedience of God, completes itself into the 
cube of the eternal city and is the life com- 
plete. Think for a moment of the life of the 
great apostle, the manly, many-sided Paul. " I 
press toward the mark for the prize of my high 
calling; " he writes to the Philippians. That 
is the length of life for him. "I will gladly 
spend and be spent for you; " he writes to 
the Corinthians. There is the breadth of life 
for him. " God hath raised us up and made 
us sit together in heavenly places in Christ 
Jesus ;" he writes to the Ephesians. There 
is the height of life for him. You can add 
nothing to these three dimensions when you 
try to account to yourself for the impression of 
completeness which comes to you out of his 
simple, lofty story. 

Look at the Lord of Paul. See how in Christ 
the same symmetrical manhood shines yet more 
complete. See what intense ambition to com- 
plete His work, what tender sympathy with 
every struggling brother by His side, and at the 
same time what a perpetual dependence on His 
Father is in Him. "For this cause came I 
into the world." " For their sakes I sanctify 
myself." "Now, O Father, glorify Thou 
me." Leave either of these out, and you 
have not the perfect Christ, not the entire 
symmetry of manhood. 11.124,125. 



264 SEPTEMBER 20. 



T^HERE is a science of knowledge, as well as 
a science of fossils, and a science or 
stars. The sacredness of all knowledge as the 
gift of God ; the unity of all knowledge as the 
utterance of God ; the purpose of all knowledge 
as the food of character in the knower and the 
helper of humanity through Him — these are 
the great departments of that science. . . . 

Oh, my friends, boys studying at college, 
men and women reading books and struggling 
so restlessly for culture, there is no way to 
win this highest knowledge, — the knowledge 
of how to know, — but in the service of the 
God of Light, who is also the God of Love, 
the God of Character, the God of Man. Any 
industrious man with a good brain and a good 
memory can know things if he will ; only the 
reverent and devoted man can know how to 
know. v. 152, 153. 



Who loves not Knowledge? Who shall rail 

Against her beauty? . . . 

But she is earthly, of the mind, 
And Wisdom heavenly, of the soul. 

Tennyson. 



SEPTEMBER 21. 265 



Whether we be afflicted, it is for your consola- 
tion and salvation : . . . or whether we be com- 
forted, it is for your consolation and salvation, 

II. Cor. i. 6. 

TO be a true minister to men is always to 
1 accept new happiness and new distress, 
both of them forever deepening and entering 
into closer and more inseparable union with 
each other the more profound and spiritual the 
ministry becomes. The man who gives him- 
self to other men can never be a wholly sad 
man ; but no more can he be a man of 
unclouded gladness. To him shall come with 
every deeper consecration a before untasted 
joy, but in the same cup shall be mixed a 
sorrow that it was beyond his power to feel 
before. They who long to sit with Jesus on 
His throne may sit there if the Father sees 
them pure and worthy, but they must be 
baptized with the baptism that He is baptized 
with. All truly consecrated men learn little 
by little that what they are consecrated to is 
not joy or sorrow, but a divine idea and a 
profound obedience, which can find their full 
outward expression not in joy, and not in 
sorrow, but in the mysterious and inseparable 
mingling of the two. influence, i 9 i, 1Q2 . 



266 SEPTEMBER 22. 



TO believe, to believe alone is to live. Scep- 
ticism as a habit, as a condition, is a sign 
of deficient vitality. It is a vastly nobler fear 
which dreads lest it should lose some truth than 
that which trembles lest it should believe some- 
thing which is not wholly true. " Seek Truth 
and pursue it." Of course seeking the Truth, 
you will hate and avoid the lie, — that goes 
without saying, — but not to avoid the lie, but 
to find the Truth. Scepticism only for the sake 
of Faith, — that is Christ's brave and healthy 

law of life. Harvard Monthly, 182. 

From doubt, where all is double ; 
Where wise men are not strong, 
Where comfort turns to trouble, 
Where just men suffer wrong ; 
Where sorrow treads on joy, 
Where sweet things soonest cloy, 
Where faiths are built on dust, 
Where love is half mistrust, 
Hungry, and barren, and sharp as the sea — 
Oh ! set us free. 
O let the false dream fly, 
Where our sick souls do lie 
Tossing continually ! 
O where thy voice doth come 
Let all doubts be dumb, 
Let all words be mild, 
All strifes be reconciled, 
All pains beguiled ! 
Light bring no blindness, 
Love no unkindness, 
Knowledge no ruin, 
Fear no undoing ! 
From the cradle to the grave 
Save, oh ! save. 

Matthew Arnold. 



SEPTEMBER 23. 267 

T^HERE is in you a power of loving awe 
* which needs infinite perfection and mercy 
to call it out and satisfy it. There is an affec- 
tion which you cannot exercise towards any 
imperfect being. It is that mixture of admira- 
tion and reverence and fear and love, which 
we call worship. ... If this power is not 
utterly to die within you, do you not need 
God ? If you are not to lose that highest 
reach of love and fear where, uniting, they 
make worship, must you not have God ? Lo ! 
before this expiring faculty the personal God 
comes and stands, and it lifts up its dying 
hands to reach after Him ; it opens its dying 
eyes to look upon Him; as when a man is 
perishing of starvation, the sight of bread 
summons him back to life. He need not die, 
but live, for here is his own life-food come to 
him. n. 102, 103. 

Trembling before Thee we fall down to adore Thee, 

Shamefaced and trembling we lift our eyes to Thee : 
O First and with the last ! annul our ruined past, 
Rebuild us to Thy glory, set us free 
From sin and from sorrow to fall down and worship 
Thee. 
Full of pity, view us, stretch Thy sceptre to us, 

Bid us live that we may give ourselves to Thee : 
O Faithful Lord and true ! stand up for us and do, 

Make us lovely, make us new, set us free, 
Heart and soul and spirit to bring all and worship 
Thee. 

Christina Rossetti. 



268 SEPTEMBER 24. 



JOY or delight in what we are doing is not a 
mere luxury ; it is a means, a help for the 
more perfect doing of our work. Indeed it may 
be truly said that no man does any work per- 
fectly who does not enjoy his work. Joy in 
one's work is the consummate tool without 
which the work may be done indeed, but with- 
out which the work will always be done slowly, 
clumsily, and without its finest perfectness. 
Men who do their work without enjoying it are 
like men carving statues with hatchets. The 
statue gets carved perhaps, and is a monument 
forever of the dogged perseverance of the artist ; 
but there is a perpetual waste of toil, and there 
is no fine result in the end. n. 31. 

A man's joy in what he has to do is the heart 
and soul of his relation to it ; or rather it is the 
relation of his heart and soul to it. Faithfulness 
to one's work may be only an outside bondage, 
but joy in it is a relationship of heart to heart, 
— of the heart of the man to the heart of his 
task. y^ , 25 

Then a voice that came not from moon or star, 
From the sun, or the wind roving afar, 
Said, " Man, I am with thee — hear my voice." 
And man said, " I rejoice." 

George MacDonald. 



SEPTEMBER 25. 269 



IT is in the silences of Nature that we are 
often sensible of being most near to Nat- 
ure's heart. Not when the thunder is roar- 
ing, nor when the winds are sighing, but in 
some hour of the morning or the evening when 
even the distant song of a bird seems an intru- 
sion, when the silence of Nature grows a trans- 
parent veil which reveals and does not hide 
her loveliness, — then is the time when you 
know how lovely Nature is ! v. 137, 139. 



Love, now an universal birth, 
From heart to heart is stealing, 
From earth to man, from man to earth, 
— It is the hour of feeling. 

One moment now may give us more 
Than fifty years of reason : 
Our minds shall drink at every pore 
The spirit of the season. 

Some silent laws our hearts will make, 
Which they shall long obey : 
We for the year to come may take 
Our temper from to-day. 

And from the blessed power that rolls 
About, below, above, 
We'll frame the measure of our souls : 
They shall be tuned to Love. 

Wordsworth. 



270 SEPTEMBER 26. 



QILENCE has as various moods as speech, 
and its moods are far more subtle. . . . 
The completest joy and the profoundest sorrow, 
both are silent. It is as different in men as it is 
in Nature. There is the silence of sunrise, all 
tremulous with hope, and the silence of sunset, 
wrapped in the stillness of its memories. There 
is the stillness of the snake slipping unseen 
through the grass, the silence of the war-horse 
waiting for the signal of the battle. How dif- 
ferent they are from one another, yet all alike 
are silent. v. 125. 

What is the saddest, sweetest, lowest sound 
Nearest akin to perfect silence? Not 
The delicate whisper sometimes in the hot 

Autumnal morning heard the cornfields round ; 

Nor yet to lonely man, now almost bound 
By slumber, near his house a murmuring river 
Buzzing and droning o'er the shores for ever. 

Not such faint voice of Autumn oat-encrowned, 

And not such liquid murmur, O my heart ! 
But tears that drop o'er graves, and sins, and fears, 
A sound the very weeper scarcely hears, 

A music in which silence hath some part. 

— O Thou, all gentle, Who all-hearing art, 
Hold not Thy peace, sweet Saviour, at my tears ! 

William Alexander. 



SEPTEMBER 27. 271 



T NEVER think of the silences of God with- 
out thinking how great is the delight 
which comes when any man discovers that 
God really has been answering him all the 
time when he thought that his prayers were 
all unheard. That must be one of the most 
exquisite joys of heaven. Among the vials 
which in the Book of Revelation held the 
prayers of saints, there must be some which, 
when the saints who prayed them find them 
in their vision-time, shine with a brilliancy 
supremely precious. They are the prayers 
which seemed as if they were not answered, 
but which really did bring down their blessing. 

V. 132. 

Wilt thou not ope the heart to know 

What rainbows teach, and sunsets show? 

Verdict which accumulates 

From lengthening scroll of human fates, 

Voice of earth to earth returned, 

Prayers of saints that inly burned, - - 

Saying : — IV hat is excellent, 

As God lives is permanent ; 

Hearts are dust, hearts 1 loves remain. 

Heart's love will meet thee again. 

Emerson. 



272 SEPTEMBER 28. 



THE suffering Saviour inly known, and 
* through His wounds letting out His life 
into the starved lives of those who hold Him 
fast, that is the Gospel. It is not what church 
you belong to or what work you do, but what 
you know of, how deeply you are fed by Him 
— the suffering Saviour. That is the question 
for the soul. 

Before His cross the lesson must be learned. 
Stand there until you are grateful through and 
through for such a love so marvellously shown. 
Let gratitude open your life to receive His 
Spirit ; let it make you long and try to be like 
Him ; let love bring Him into you so that you 
shall do His will because you have His heart. 
That entrance of His life into you shall give 
you strength and nourishment you never knew 
before. n . 9S1 . 

When temptation sore is rife, 
When we faint amidst the strife, 
Thou, whose death hath been our life, 
Save us, Holy Jesu. 

While on stormy seas we toss, 
Let us count all things but loss, 
But Thee only on Thy Cross : 

Save us, Holy Jesu. 

So, with hope in Thee made fast, 
When death's bitterness is past 
We may see Thy Face at last : 

Save us, Holy Jesu. 

Litany of the Passion. 



SEPTEMBER 29. 273 

Seraphic intellect and force 

To seize and throw the doubts of man ; 

Impassion'd logic, which outran 
The nearer in its fiery course ; 

High nature amorous of the good, 
But touch'd with no ascetic gloom ; 
And passion pure in snowy bloom 

Thro' all the years of April blood ; 

And manhood fused with female grace 
In such a sort, the child would twine 
A trustful hand, unask'd, in thine, 

And find his comfort in thy face ; 

All these have been, and thee mine eyes 
Have look'd on : if they look'd in vain, 
My shame is greater who remain, 

Nor let thy wisdom make me wise. 

Tennyson. 

THESE are the qualities which we have seen 
in the choice young man, — purity of 
body, mind, and soul ; simple integrity, and a 
dignity which will not have what is not his, no 
matter under what specious form of game or 
wager it has come into his hands ; tenderness, 
sympathy, sentiment, — call it what name you 
will, a soul that is not cynical, or cruel ; and 
positive, broad thought and conviction. . . . 
It is always sad not to feel the choiceness of 
anything which has in it wonderful and fine 
capacities, — to be content with the ordinari- 
ness and coarseness of that which is capable 
of being exquisite and great. Oh, that there 
could thrill through the being of our young 
men some electrical sense that they are God's 
sons, that so they might make themselves the 
servants of His Christ, and live the life and 
attain the nature which are rightly theirs. 

V. 102, 105. 



274 SEPTEMBER 30. 

Give attendance to readings to exhortation, to 
doctrine. . . . Take heed unto thyself, and unto the 
doctrine ; continue in them : for in doing this thou 
shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee. 

I. Tim. iv. 13, 16. 

T^HE truth is, no preaching ever had any 
* strong power that was not the preaching 
of doctrine. The preachers that have moved 
and held men have always preached doctrine. 
No exhortation to a good life that does not put 
behind it some truth as deep as eternity can 
seize and hold the conscience. Preach doc- 
trine, preach all the doctrine that you know, 
and learn forever more and more ; but preach 
it always, not that men may believe it, but 
that men may be saved by believing it. So it 
shall be live, not dead. So men shall rejoice 
in it and not decry it. So they shall feed on it 
at your hands as on the bread of life, solid and 
sweet, and claiming for itself the appetite of 
man which God made for it. preaching, 129. 

To decry dogma in the interest of character, 
is like despising food as if it interfered with 
health. Food is not health. The human body 
is built just so as to turn food into health and 
strength. And truth is not holiness. The 
human soul is made to turn, by the subtle 
chemistry of its digestive experience, truth 
into goodness. And this, I think, is just what 
the Christian, as he goes on, finds himself do- 
ing under God's grace. IL 43 . 



OCTOBER i. 275 



T S it success in the struggle of life simply to get 
A through with decency and die without dis- 
grace or shame ? Is it success in the struggle of 
life just to have so laid hold on God's mercy, 
to have so made our peace with Him, that we 
know we shall not be punished for our sins ? Is 
it success in the struggle of life even to have so 
lived in His presence that every day has been 
bright with the sense that He was taking care of 
us ? These things are very good ; but if the 
purpose of God's government of the world and 
of us is what I said, then the real victory in the 
struggle can be nothing less than the accom- 
plishment in us of that which it is the object of 
all His government to accomplish in the world. 
When, truly obedient, we have been made like 
Him whom we obey, then, only then, we have 
overcome in the struggle of life. n . 7 o, 7 i. 



And will not, then, the immortal armies scorn 
The world's poor, routed leavings? or will they, 
Who fail'd under the heat of this life's day, 
Support the fervors of the heavenly morn ? 
No, no ! the energy of life may be 
Kept on after the grave, but not begun ! 
And he who flagg'd not in the earthly strife, 
From strength to strength advancing — only he, 
His soul well-knit, and all his battles won, 
Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life. 

Matthew Arnold, 



276 OCTOBER 2. 



The light will never open sightless eyes, 

It comes to those who willingly would see ; 

And every object — hill, and stream, and skies — 

Rejoice within th' encircling line to be. 

'Tis day — the field is filled with busy hands, 

The shop resounds with noisy workmen's din, 

The traveler with his staff already stands 

His yet unmeasured journey to begin ; 

The light breaks gently, too, within the breast, — 

Yet there no eye awaits the crimson morn, 

The forge and noisy anvil are at rest, 

Nor men nor oxen tread the fields of corn, 

Nor pilgrim lifts his staff, — it is no day 

To those who find on earth their place to stay. 

Jones Very. 

THE spiritual nature of the world ; that all 
this mass of things and events is fitted for 
and naturally struggles towards the education 
of character ; the spiritual nature of man ; . . . 
and God ; . . . these are the before un- 
seen realities which come pressing into your 
intelligence, tempting, demanding your recog- 
nition when your conscience is once open, when 
you have once begun to live in the desire and 
struggle to do right. Do you not see then what 
I mean when I say that the conscience stands 
between man's power of knowledge and the 
spiritual world, just as the eye stands between 
man's power of knowledge and the world of 
visible nature. It is the opened or unopened 
window through which flows the glorious 
knowledge of God and heaven ; or outside of 
which that knowledge waits, as the sun with 
its glory or the flower with its beauty waits 
outside the closed eye of a blind or sleeping 
man. 11.80,81. 



OCTOBER 3. 277 



'"THE things that are spiritual bring their own 
* sidelong testimonies of themselves. They 
touch my sense of beauty. They make me 
feel how good it would be for the world if they 
were true. I hear their movement in the 
depths of history. . . . Yet there stands the 
separate glory of the revelation of that day 
when to me, at last beginning to try to do 
right, the God whose faint reports have come 
to me pours in upon my opened soul the glori- 
ous conviction of His righteousness and love ; 
and my soul, in which I have half believed, 
becomes the centre of my life ; becomes my 
life, that for which all the other parts of me are 
made. Then, in the knowledge which pours 
through my opened conscience, then I know 
with an assurance which makes all the knowl- 
edge that I had before seem but a guess and 
dim suspicion. n. 82. 

Ah, there is something here 
Unfathomed by the cynic's sneer, 
Something that gives our feeble light 
A high immunity from Night, 
Something that leaps life's narrow bars 
To claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven ; 



A conscience more divine than we, 
A gladness fed with secret tears, 
A vexing, forward-reaching sense 
Of some more noble permanence; 

A light across the sea, 
Which haunts the soul and will not let it be, 
Still glimmering from the heights of undegenerate 
years. 

James Russell Lowell. 



278 OCTOBER 4. 



Mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts. 

Is. vi. 5. 

WHEN one declares that through the con- 
science man arrives at the knowledge 
of unseen things, and conceptions of God and 
spiritual force and immortality reveal themselves 
to the intelligence, at once the suggestion comes 
from some one who is listening, " Can we be 
sure of the reality of what thus seems to 
be made known ? How can we be sure that 
what the conscience sends in to the understand- 
ing are not mere creations of its own ; things 
which it thinks exist because it seems to need 
them ; mere forms in which it has been led to 
clothe with outward and substantial life its own 
emotions?" . . . Are not then the questions 
which haunt the conscience the same as those 
which haunt the eye ? And as the eye deals 
with its questions, so will the conscience always 
deal with its. A conviction of the reality of 
what it sees, which is a part of its consciousness 
that no suspicion can disturb ; a use of its 
knowledge, which brings ever a more and more 
complete assurance of its trustworthiness, — 
these are the practical issue of every such 
question with regard to what the brain sees 
through the eye ; and the same will be the 
practical issue of every question with regard to 
what the soul sees through the conscience. At 
least we may say this, that it would be a very 
deep confidence indeed if the soul felt as sure of 
God as the mind feels of nature. n . 82, s 3 . 



OCTOBER 5. 279 

Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of 
our faith ; who, for the joy that was set before 
Him, endured t/ie cross, despising the shame, and 
is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. 

Heb. xii. 2. 

A S Jesus was, so may we be, seeking an end 
^~* so great, so constant, so eternal that 
every change may come to us and be our 
minister and not our conqueror ; that even our 
cross may come as His came, and men may 
gather round it and say, " Alas, then this is 
all ! Alas, that finally it should all come to 
this! " While we who hang upon the cross 
cry, "-It is finished," with a shout of triumph, 
counting the finishing but a new beginning, 
and looking out beyond the cross to richer 
growth in character, and braver and more 
fruitful service of our Lord ! v. i7 z, i7i . 

Was it not great? did he not throw on God, 

(He loves the burthen) — 
God's task to make the heavenly period 

Perfect the earthen ? 

He ventured neck or nothing — heaven's success 

Found, or earth's failure : 
' Wilt thou trust death or not ? " He answered, " Yes. 

Hence with life's pale lure." 



280 OCTOBER 6. 

EVERY emotion has its higher and its lower 
forms. It means but little to me if I know 
only that a man is happy or unhappy, if I do 
not know of what sort his joy or sorrow is. 
But all the emotions are certainly tempted to 
larger action if it is realized that the world in 
which they take their birth is but for a little 
time, that its fashion passes away, that the cir- 
cumstances of an experience are very transitory. 
That must drive me down into the essence of 
every experience, and make me realize it in the 
profoundest and the largest way. . . . (Our grief 
exalted to its largest form) grows unselfish. It is 
perfectly consistent with a triumphant thankful- 
ness for the dear soul that has entered into rest 
and glory. It dwells not on the circumstances 
of bereavement, but upon that mysterious strain 
in which love has been stretched from this world 
to the other, and, amid all the pain that the ten- 
sion brings, is still aware of joy at the new 
knowledge of its own capacities which has been 
given it. i. 325. 326. 

My love involves the love before ; 

My love is vaster passion now ; 

Tho' mixed with God and Nature thou, 
I seem to love thee more and more. 

Far off thou art, but ever nigh ; 

I have thee still, and 1 rejoice ; 

I prosper, circled with thy voice ; 
I shall not lose thee thcr I die. 

Tennyson. 



OCTOBER 7. 281 



CHRIST comes and puts His essential life into 
our human form. In that form He claims 
the truest brotherhood with us. He shares our 
lot. He binds His life with ours so that they 
never can be separated. What He is we must 
be; what we are, He must be forever. Finally 
by the cross of love, He entering into our death 
takes us completely into His life. And when 
He had done all this He rose. Out of His tomb, 
standing there among human tombs, He comes, 
and lo, before Him there rolls on the unbroken 
endlessness of Being. And not before Him 
alone, — before those also whom He had taken 
so completely to Himself. His resurrection 
makes our resurrection sure. Our earthly life, 
like His, becomes an episode, a short, special, 
temporary thing, when it is seen like His against 
an immortality. T> 33X> 

Earth breaks up, time drops away, 

In flows Heaven, with its new day 

Of endless life, when He who trod, 

Very Man and very God, 

This earth in weakness, shame and pain, 

Dying the death whose signs remain. 

Up yonder on the accursed tree, — 

Shall come again, no more to be 

Of captivity the thrall, 

But the one God, All in all, 

King of kings, Lord of lords, 

As His servant John received the words, 

" I died, and live forevermore ! " 

Browning. 



282 OCTOBER 8, 

'""THERE is somewhere in the human mind an 
* image of human character in which all 
wayward impulses are restrained, not by out- 
side compulsion, but by the firm grasp of a 
power which holds everything into obedience 
from within by the central purpose of the life. 
This character dreads fury and excitement as 
signs of feebleness. It shrinks from self-dis- 
play just in proportion as it accepts the re- 
sponsibilities of selfhood. It is patient because 
it is powerful. It is tolerant because it is sure. 
It is this character, I think, which St. Paul 
calls by his great word moderation. It is self- 
possession. It is the self found and possessed 
in God. It is the sweet reasonableness which 
was in Jesus. IV . 3 6 7 , 368. 

Whose high endeavors are an inward light 
That makes the path before him always bright : 

More skilful in self-knowledge, even more pure, 
As tempted more ; more able to endure, 
As more exposed to suffering and distress ; 
Thence, also, more alive to tenderness. 



But who, if he be called upon to face 

Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined 

Great issues, good or bad for human kind, 

Is happy as a lover ; and attired 

With sudden brightness, like a man inspired ; 

And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law 

In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw; 

Or if an unexpected call succeed, 

Come when it will, is equal to the need. 

Wordsworth. 



OCTOBER 9. 283 



TN our own little sphere, it is not the most 
1 active people to whom we owe the most. 
Among the common people whom we know 
it is not necessarily those who are busiest, not 
those who, meteor-like, are ever on the rush 
after some visible change and work. It is the 
lives, like the stars, which simply pour down 
on us the calm light of their bright and faithful 
being, up to which we look and out of which 

we gather the deepest calm and courage. 

1. 105. 

QUIET WORK. 

One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee, 
One lesson, which in every wind is blown, 
One lesson of two duties kept at one, 
Though the loud world proclaim their enmity — 

Of toil unsever'd from tranquillity ! 
Of labor, that in lasting fruit outgrows 
Far noisier schemes, accomplish'd in repose — 
Too great for haste, too high for rivalry ! 

Yes, while on earth a thousand discords ring, 
Man's senseless uproar mingling with his toil, 
Still do thy quiet ministers move on, 

Their glorious tasks in silence perfecting ! 
Still working, blaming still our vain turmoil, 
Laborers that shall not fail, when man is gone. 

Matthew Arnold. 



284 OCTOBER 10. 

SOLITUDE makes the consciousness ; so- 
ciety develops, multiplies, and confirms 
it. That which would have remained only 
a quality in Jesus, if He had stayed in the 
desert, becomes a life when He goes forth into 
the world. What Goethe wisely says of all 
men does not lose its truth when we are think- 
ing of the Son of Man : " A talent shapes itself 
in stillness, but a character in the tumult of 
the world. " This is Christ's balance between 
solitude and society. Each makes the other 
necessary. With us they often lose this 
value, because they are not set in any relation 
to each other. Solitude is barren, and so so- 
ciety is frivolous. Solitude creates no con- 
sciousness for society to ripen. Solitude is 
like an unfertile seed, and society is like an 
unplanted ground. influence, 105, 106. 

By all means use sometimes to be alone. 

Salute thyself : see what thy soul doth wear. 

Dare to look in thy chest ; for 'tis thine own : 

And tumble up and down what thou find'st there. 
Who cannot rest till he good fellows find, 
He breaks up house, turns out of doors his mind. 

George Herbert. 

Open innumerable doors 
To heaven where unveiled Allah pours 
The flood of truth, the flood of good, 
The Seraph's and the Cherub's food. 
Those doors are men : the Pariah hind 
Admits thee to the perfect Mind. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson. 



OCTOBER ii. 285 



Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. 

John i. 17. 

IF you look back to the men who have taught 
you most, and in the fuller light where you 
now stand, study their character, you will 
surely find that the real secret of their power 
lay here, in the harmonious blending of the 
knowing and the loving powers in their nature ; 
in the opening of their nature on both sides, 
so that truth entered in freely here and you 
entered in freely there, and you and truth 
met, as it were, familiarly in the hospitality 
of their great characters. The man who has 
only the knowing power active, lets truth in, 
but it finds no man to feed. The man who 
has only the loving power active, lets man in, 
but he finds no truth to feed on. The real 
teacher welcomes both. . . Grace and Truth ! 
These are exactly the two elements of which 
we have been speaking, and it must have been 
in the perfect meeting of those two elements 
in Jesus that His mediatorship, His power to 
transmute the everlasting truths of God into 
the immediate help of needy men consisted. 
He was no rapt self-centred student of the 
abstract truth ; nor was he the merely ready 
sentimental pitier of the woes of men. But in 
His whole nature there was finely wrought 
and combined the union of the abstract and 
eternal with the special and the personal. 

IV. 10, 12. 



286 OCTOBER 12. 



One poor day ! — 

Remember whose and not how short it is ! 

It is God's day, it is Columbus's. 

A lavish day ! One day, with life and heart, 

Is more than time enough to find a world. 

James Russell Lowell. 

/^vNE year God lifted the curtain from a hidden 
^^ continent, and gave His children a whole 
new world in which to carry out His purposes. 
Another year He revealed to them a strange, 
simple little invention which made the treasured 
knowledge of the few to be the free heritage of 
all. Another year He touched the solid frame 
of a great spiritual despotism, and it trembled 
and quaked, and thousands of its slaves came 
forth free men. Another year, in our own time, 
in our own land, He sent the message of liberty 
to a nation of bondmen, and the fetters fell off 
from their limbs. We call these events of his- 
tory. They have a right to be called the com- 
ings of the Lord. They all are echoes and 
illustrations of that great coming of the Lord 
from which they who have known of it agree 
by instinctive consent to date their history, the 
birth of the child of Bethlehem, the Man of 
Nazareth and Calvary into the world. 

IV. 363, 364. 



OCTOBER 13. 287 

BRETHREN, the time is short." There 
is the fact, then, forever pressing on 
us, and these are the consequences which it 
ought to bring to those who feel its pressure. 
Behold, it is no dreary shadow hanging above 
our heads and shutting out the sunshine. It 
is an everlasting inspiration. It makes a man 
know himself and his career. It makes him 
put his heart into the heart of the career 
which he knows to be his. It makes the 
emotions and experiences of life great and 
not petty to him. It makes life solemn and 
interesting with criticalness ; and it makes 
friendship magnanimous, and the desire to 
help our fellow-men real and energetic. It 
concentrates and invigorates our lives. In the 
brightest, freshest, clearest mornings, it comes 
to us not as a cloud, not as a paralysis, but 
as a new brightness in the sunshine and a 
new vigor in the arm. "Brethren, the time 
is short." Only remember the shortness of 
life is not a reality to us, except as it shows 
itself against a true realization of eternity. 

1. 330. 

Up, my drowsing eyes ! 

Up, my sinking heart ! 
Up to Jesus Christ arise ! 

Claim your part 
In all rapture of the skies. 

Yet a little while, 

Yet a little way, 
Saints shall reap and rest and smile 

All the day : — 
Up ! let's trudge another mile. 

Christina Rossetti. 



288 OCTOBER 14. 



Phillips Brooks consecrated Bishop, i8qi. 

THE Shepherd of the People ! He fed 
us faithfully and truly. He fed us with 
counsel when we were in doubt, with inspira- 
tion when we sometimes faltered, with caution 
when we would be rash, with calm, clear, 
trustful cheerfulness through many an hour 
when our hearts were dark. He fed hungry 
souls all over the country with sympathy and 
consolation. He spread before the whole land 
feasts of great duty and devotion and patriot- 
ism, on which the land grew strong. He fed 
us with solemn, solid truths. ... He made 
our souls glad and vigorous with the love of 
liberty that was in his. He showed us how to 
love truth and yet be charitable — how to hate 
wrong and all oppression, and yet not treasure 
one personal injury or insult. ... He spread 
before us the love and fear of God just in that 
shape in which we need them most, and out of 
his faithful service of a higher Master who of 
us has not taken and eaten and grown strong ? 

Sermon on Abraham Lincoln. 

Therefore to thee it was given 
Many to save with thyself ; 
And, at the end of thy day, 
O faithful shepherd ! to come, 
Bringing thy sheep in thy hand. 

Matthew Arnold. 



OCTOBER 15. 289 



r^ HRISTIANITY, or the change of man's life 
hy Christ, has three different aspects in 
which it appears — three ways in which it makes 
its power known. It appears either as Truth, 
as Righteousness, or as Love. Every soul 
which is really redeemed by Christ will enter 
into new beliefs, higher ways of action, and 
deeper affections towards fellow-men. . . . 
All spiritual character must reside ultimately in 
single souls ; but still I think that it is mani- 
festly true that an aggregate of individuals may 
possess in its own peculiar way the spiritual 
character which the individual possesses, and a 
city, like a man, have and exhibit Christian 
faith and Christian righteousness and Christian 
love. hi. 139, 140. 



I dream'd in a dream I saw a city invincible to the at- 
tacks of the whole of the rest of the earth, 

I dream'd that was the new city of Friends, 

Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust 
love, it led the rest, 

It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that 
city, 

And in all their looks and words. 

Walt Whitman. 



2Q0 OCTOBER 16. 



You're my friend — 

What a thing friendship is, world without end ! 

How it gives the heart and soul a stir-up, 

As if somebody broached you a glorious runlet ! 

Browning. 

THERE is nothing so bad for man or woman 
as to live always with their inferiors. It is 
a truth so important, that one might well wish 
to turn aside a moment and urge it, even in its 
lower aspects, upon the young people who are 
just making their associations and friendships. 
Many a temptation of laziness or pride induces 
us to draw towards those who do not know as 
much or are not in some way as strong as we 
are. It is a smaller tax upon our powers to be 
in their society. But it is bad for us. I am 
sure that I have known men, intellectually 
and morally very strong, the whole develop- 
ment of whose intellectual and moral life has 
suffered and been dwarfed, because they have 
only accompanied with their inferiors, because 
they have not lived with men greater than 
themselves. Whatever else they lose, they 
surely must lose some culture of humility. If 
I could choose a young man's companions, 
some should be weaker than himself, that he 
might learn patience and charity ; many should 
be as nearly as possible his equals, that he 
might have the full freedom of friendship ; but 
most should be stronger than he was, that he 
might forever be thinking humbly of himself 
and be tempted to higher things. i. 339> 340 . 



OCTOBER 17. 291 



TF in doing (your work), the principal bless- 
* ing of it all was that it permitted you to 
look into God's soul and see how self-complete 
and perfect and supreme He was ; how, after 
all His workings, it was not in His works but in 
His nature, not in His doing but in His being, 
that God's true glory lay ; if as you worked 
with Him, you really looked into His nature 
and discerned all this, — then when He takes 
your work away and bids you no longer to do 
good and obedient things but only to be good 
and obedient, surely that is not the death of 
faith. That may be faith's transfiguration. 

V. 322. 

Lord, I had planned to do Thee service true, 
To be more humbly watchful unto prayer, 
More faithful in obedience to Thy Word, 
More bent to put away all earthly care. 

I thought of sad hearts comforted and healed, 
Of wanderers turned into the pleasant way, 
Of little ones preserved from sinful snare, 
Of dark homes brightened with a heavenly ray ; 

Of time all consecrated to Thy Will, 

Of strength spent gladly for Thee, day by day, 
When suddenly the heavenly mandate came, 
That I should give it all, at once, away. 

And was it loss, to have indulged such hopes? 
Nay, they were gifts, from out the Inner Shrine, — 
Garlands, that I might hang about Thy Cross, 
Gems, to surrender at the call Divine. 

Caroline M. Noel. 



292 OCTOBER 18. 



Luke the beloved physician. — Col. iv. 14. 

MAY we not say this of the two works 
(theology and medicine), that, first, 
they above all others demand, as of funda- 
mental importance, character in the men who 
do them ; and that, second, the element of 
merciful feeling and readiness for self-sacrifice 
which are incidental to most other occupations 
are essential and indispensable in these two ? 
These are what really mark how divine they 
are, and how they belong together. . . . 
I add to this that both live constantly in the 
immediate presence of awful and mysterious 
forces ; that both are always, while they see 
before them human need, feeling behind them 
that which, call it by what name they will, 
is Divine Power — is God ; and so are always 
pressed on by the demand for reverence and 
piety. 

I add again that while each has its imme- 
diate appeal to make to terror and the fear of 
pain, the ultimate address of each must be 
to ardent courage and enthusiastic hope. I 
put all these together and then the figures 
of Paul and Luke walking together through 
history as the ministers of Christ, — the 
images of theology and medicine laboring in 
harmony for the redemption of man, for the 
saving of body, soul, and spirit, — become 
very sacred and impressive. May their 
fellowship become more generous and hearty 
as the years go on ! May each gain greater 
honor for the other, and both become more 
humbly and transparently the ministers of 
Christ ! v. 232,233- 



OCTOBER 19. 293 



AS you grow better . . . you sweep up out 
of the grasp of money, praise, ease, dis- 
tinction. You sweep up into the necessity of 
truth, courage, virtue, love, and God. The 
gravitation of the earth grows weaker, the 
gravitation of the stars takes stronger and 
stronger hold upon you. And on the other 
hand, as you grow worse, as you go down, the 
terrible opposite of all this comes to pass. The 
highest necessities let you go, and the lowest 
necessities take tighter hold of you. Still, as 
you go down, you are judged by what you can 
do without and what you cannot do without. 
You come down at last where you cannot do 
without a comfortable dinner and an easy bed, 
but you can do without an act of charity or a 
thought of God. L 293 . 

Oh, good, gigantic smile 0' the brown old earth, 
This autumn morning ! How he sets his bones 

To bask i' the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet 

For the ripple to run over in its mirth ; 
Listening the while, where on the heap of stones 

The white breast of the sea-lark twitters sweet. 

That is the doctrine, simple, ancient, true ; 

Such is life's trial, as old earth smiles and knows. 
If you loved only what were worth your love, 
Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you : 

Make the low nature better by your throes ! 
Give earth yourself, go up for gain above ! 

Browning. 



294 OCTOBER 20. 



The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord. 

Prov. xx. 27. 

T J E who comes into the presence of any pow- 
erful nature, whose power is at all of a 
spiritual sort, feels sure that in some way he is 
coming into the presence of God. But it would 
be melancholy if only the great men could give 
us this conviction. The world would be darker 
than it is if every human spirit, so soon as it 
became obedient, did not become the Lord's 
candle. . . . There is no life so humble 
that, if it be true and genuinely human and 
obedient to God, it may not hope to shed some 
of His light. There is no life so meagre that 
the greatest and wisest of us can afford to de- 
spise it. We cannot know at all at what sudden 
moment it may flash forth with the life of God. 

II. 8, 9. 

Our little systems have their day ; 
They have their day and cease to be : 
They are but broken lights of Thee, 

And Thou, O Lord, art more than they. 

Tennyson. 



OCTOBER 21. 295 



Jesus said unto him, Thou s halt love the Lord thy 
God . . . with all thy mind. — Matt. xxii. 37. 

r^ OD, the Father of men, is not satisfied if 
His children give Him simply gratitude for 
His mercies or the most loyal obedience to His 
will ; He wants also, as the fulfilment of their 
love to Him, the enthusiastic use of their intel- 
lects, intent to know everything that it is pos- 
sible for men to know about their Father and 
His ways. That is what is meant by loving 
God with the mind. And is there not some- 
thing sublimely beautiful and touching in this 
demand of God that the noblest part of His 
children's nature should come to Him ? " Un- 
derstand me! understand me!" He seems to 
cry; "I am not wholly loved by you unless 
your understanding is reaching out after my 
truth, and with all your powers of thoughtfulness 
and study you are trying to find out all that you 
can about my nature and my ways." hi. 32. 

Vouchsafe then, O Thou most Almightie Spright ! 
From whom all gifts of wit and knowledge flow, 
To shed into my breast some sparkling light 
Of Thine eternal 1 Truth, that I may show 
Some litle beames to mortall eyes below 
Of that immortall beautie, there with Thee, 
Which in my weake distraughted mynd I see. 

Spenser. 



296 OCTOBER 22. 

TT is the continuity of life, the continuity of 
A nature, that is our salvation. " Nothing from 
nothing " is the first law of her household, and 
her dullest children must learn it, for it is written 
on the walls that shelter them, on the ground 
they tread, on the table from which they eat, 
and on the tools with which they work. 

And her law of economy is just as clear. Pro- 
fusion, but no waste ; this is the lesson that 
Nature reads us everywhere. The dead leaves 
of this autumn are worked into next year's soil. 
The little stream that has watered the greenness 
of many meadows goes afterwards to do duty in 
the great sea. The vast surrounding atmos- 
phere is made efficient over and over again for 
the breath of living men. Everywhere pro- 
fusion, but no waste. For men who need to be 
trained to reasonableness and care, God has 
built just the home they needed for their train- 
ing, and sent us to live in this star which shines 
among His other stars steadily and soberly with 

its double light of continuity and economy. 

11. 132, 133. 

Mother she is and cradle of our race, 

A depth where treasures lie, 
The broad foundation of a holy place, 

Man's step to scale the sky. 

Earth may not pass till heaven shall pass away, 

Nor heaven may be renewed 
Except with earth ; and once more in that day 

Earth shall be very good. 

Christina Rossetti. 



OCTOBER 23. 297 



/CONTINUITY and economy ; these are the 
^-^ laws of Him who is leading us, the Cap- 
tain of our salvation. He always binds the 
future to the past, and He wastes nothing. 
O, there are some here who want to get away 
from all their past ; who, if they could, would 
fain begin all over again. Their life with 
Christ seems one long failure. But you must 
learn, you must let God teach you, that the 
only way to get rid of your past is to get a 
future out of it. God will waste nothing. 
There is something in your past, something, 
even if it only be the sin of which you have 
repented, which, if you can put it into the 
Saviour's hands, will be a new life for you. 

11. 145. 

1 Forsake the Christ thou sawest transfigured, Him 

Who trod the sea and brought the dead to life? 

What should wring this from thee ? ' — ye laugh and 

ask. 
What wrung it? Even a torchlight and a noise, 
The sudden Roman faces, violent hands, 
And fear of what the Jews might do ! Just that, 
And, it is written, ' I forsook and fled ' : 
There was my trial and it ended thus. 
Ay, but my soul had gained its truth, could grow. 

Browning. 



298 OCTOBER 24. 

YOU are a star and not a sun. Your place 
in life is not in the forefront of things ; it 
is subordinate and secondary. What then ? 
Can you learn this truth, — that if you do 
your work with complete faithfulness and with 
the most absolute perfectness with which it is 
capable «of being done, you are making just 
as genuine a contribution to the substance of 
the universal good as is the most brilliant 
worker whom trie world contains ? You are 
setting as true a fact here between the 
eternities as he. You are doing what he 
cannot do. It is Emerson's fable of the 
Mountain and the Squirrel, — 

" If I cannot carry forests on my back, 
Neither can you crack a nut." 

" There is one glory of the sun, and another 
glory of the stars.' ' 

All our works, even the greatest, are so 
little in relation to the world's need ; all our 
works, even the least, are so great in relation 
to the doer's faithfulness. There is the secret 
of self-respect. Oh, go take up your work 
and do it. Do it with cheerfulness and love. 
So shall you shine with a glory which is all 
your own, — a glory which the great heaven 
of universal life would be poorer for missing. 

V. 68, 69. 

" Like as a star, 
That maketh not haste, 
That taketh not rest, 
Be each one fulfilling 
His God-given best." 



OCTOBER 25. 299 

A bruised reed shall He not break, 

And the smoking flax shall He not quench : 

He shall bring forth judgment unto truth. 

Is. xlii. 3. 

T^O say " well-done " to any bit of work 
that has embodied good effort, is to take 
hold of the powers which have made the effort 
and confirm and strengthen them. But if you 
have nothing to say to your child or to your 
scholar except (what may be perfectly true) 
that much of his work is badly done, that he is 
wasting opportunities and losing the value of his 
life, then you are coming to him not to fulfil 
but to destroy. 

I beg you to think of this, you who are set 
in positions of superintendence and authority. 
Make a great deal more of your right to praise 
the good than of your right to blame the bad. 
Never let a brave and serious struggle after 
truth and goodness, however weak it may be, 
pass unrecognized. Do not be chary of appre- 
ciation. Hearts are unconsciously hungry for 
it. There is little danger, especially with us in 
this cold New England region, that appreciation 
shall be given too abundantly. IV . 2I4 , 2I5 . 



300 OCTOBER 26. 

And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me 
when Thou contest into Thy kingdom. A?id Jesus 
said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt 
thou be with Me in Paradise. 

Luke xxiii. 42, 43. 

\\ T\TH silent, soft, and mighty pressure, the 
W sight of the Sufferer's holiness, and the 
gratitude for the Sufferer's pity, as one complete 
power, one perfect love, has drawn the depths 
of men's lives on to the nature of the Sufferer, 
and there their oneness to Him has become 
known to them, and they, in and through Him, 
have been renewed into the image of their 
Father, and His Father. The robber who was 
crucified with Him felt that power first. It was 
a baptism of blood, and the power which our 
baptisms re-echo found its first utterance in 
Him. " Being by nature, born in sin and the 
child of wrath," there by the fellowship of 
suffering, there by the power of love, in which 
admiration and gratitude met, he was made the 
" child of grace." influence, 53 . 

O Jesus, Who lovest us all, stoop low from Thy 
Glory above : 
Where sin hath abounded make grace to abound and 
superabound, 
Till we gaze on Thee face unto Face, and respond to 
Thee love unto Love. 

Christina Rossetti. 



OCTOBER 27. 301 

I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. 

II. Tim. iv. 7. 

A/\ EN lose their love and trust and hope, as 
they grow old. Here was a man [St. 
Paul] who kept them all fresh to the last. 
Men cease to have strong convictions, and 
grow cynical or careless. Here was a man 
who believed more, and not less, as he knew 
more of God, and of himself, and of the world. 
His old age did not come creeping into port, a 
wreck, with broken masts and rudder gone, 
but full-sailed still, and strong for other voyages 
in other seas. We are sure that his was the 
old age God loves to see; that the careless 
and the hopeless and the faithless are the 
failures. To such men as Paul alone is God's 
promise to David fulfilled: ''With long life 
will I satisfy him and show him my salva- 
tion. " IL 77 . 

Youth ended, I shall try 
My gain or loss thereby ; 
Be the fire ashes, what survives is gold : 
And I shall weigh the same, 
Give life its praise or blame : 

Young, all lay in dispute ; I shall know being old. 

Browning. 



302 OCTOBER 28. 



/^vUR creed, our credo, anything which we 
^^ call by such a sacred name, is not what 
we have thought, but what our Lord has told 
us. The true creed must come down from 
above and not out from within. Have your 
opinions always, but do not bind yourself to 
them. Call your opinions your creed, and 
you will change it every week. Make your 
creed simply and broadly out of the revelation 
of God, and you may keep it to the end. This 
is the difference between the hundreds of long, 
detailed confessions of many differing sects, 
overloaded with the minute speculations of 
good men, which take in and dismiss their 
believers like the nightly lodgers of an eastern 
caravansary, and the short scriptural creed of 
the church universal, into which souls come 
seeking rest and strength, and live in it as in a 
home, and go no more out forever. L 7Ii 72 . 

O Almighty God. who hast built Thy Church upon 
the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus 
Christ Himself being the head corner-stone ; Grant us 
so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their doc- 
trine, that we may be made an holy temple acceptable 
unto Thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. 

Book of Common Prayer. 



OCTOBER 29. 303 

While Peter thought on the vision, the Spirit 
said unto him, Behold, three men seek thee. 

Acts x. 19. 

CVERY man has visions, glimpses clearer or 
J— ' duller, now bright and beautiful, now 
clouded and obscure, of what is absolutely and 
abstractly true ; and every man also has press- 
ing on him the warm, clear lives of fellow-men. 
There is the world of truths on one side, and 
there is the world of men upon the other. Be- 
tween the two stands man ; and these two 
worlds, if man is what he ought to be, meet 
through his nature. 

Truth is vague and helpless until men believe 
it. Men are weak and frivolous till they believe 
in truth. To furnish truth to the believing 
heart, and to furnish believing hearts to truth, 
certainly there is no nobler office for a human 
life than that. . . . How can we better tell the 
story of you who first believe in God yourself 
and then are drawn out to make your fellow-men 
believe in Him, and in making them believe in 
Him find your own belief grow steadier and 
clearer — how shall we better depict this human 
life which never learns anything without hear- 
ing other human lives clamoring to share the 
blessings of its knowledge than by recurring to 
the story of Peter, to whom, " as he thought on 
the vision, the Spirit said, Behold, three men 
seek thee.'' IV . 2l4 . 



304 OCTOBER 30. 

I am the . . . Truth. — John xiv. 6. 

'"THE great fact concerning (the intellectual 
* life of Jesus) is this, that in Him the in- 
tellect never works alone. You never can 
separate its workings from the complete opera- 
tion of the whole nature. He never simply 
knows, but always loves and resolves at the 
same time. Truth which the mind discovers 
becomes immediately the possession of the af- 
fections and the will. It cannot remain in the 
condition of mere knowledge. Indeed, knowl- 
edge is no word of Jesus. Solomon in the Book 
of Proverbs is always talking about knowledge. 
Jesus, in the Gospel of John, is always talking 
about truth. So genuine is the unity of His 
being, that what comes to Him as knowledge 
is pressed and gathered into every part of Him, 
and fills His entire nature as truth. The rays 
of intellectual light are absorbed into the whole 
substance of the spontaneous affections and the 
unerring will. The right and the true, the 
wrong and the false, are not separable from one 
another. The life is simple because of its com- 
pleteness. It is the true unity of a man. 

Influence, 219. 

O Father of Truth, 

Have mercy upon us. 
O Express Image of the Father, 

Change us into Thy likeness. 
O Ineffable Truth, 

Guide us into all truth. 

Book of Litanies. Neale. 



OCTOBER 31. 305 

If any man will do His will, he shall know of 
the doctrine, — John vii. 17. 

If a man love me, he will keep my words : and 
my Father will love him, and we will come unto 
him, and make our abode with him. 

John xiv. 23. 

THOSE, I think, are the two critical passages 
in which Jesus gives us His doctrine of the 
intellectual life. They are as clear and definite 
as if they were written in a book of science. 
They both declare that in the highest things 
the intellect can never work alone for the dis- 
covery of truth. Truth, when it is won, is the 
possession of the whole nature. By the action 
of the whole nature only can it be gained. The 
king must go with his counsellors at his side and 
his army at his back, or he makes no conquest. 
The intellect must be surrounded by the rich- 
ness of the affections and backed by the power 
of the will, or it attains no perfect truth. 

Influence. 247. 

Happy the man taught by the truth itself ; 

Not by the shapes and sounds that pass across his life 

But by the very truth. 

Our thoughts and senses often lead us wrong ; 

They see one side alone. 

O God of truth 
Make me one with Thee in eternal love. 
Oft am I weary, reading, listening, 
But all I wish and long for is in Thee. 
Then silent be all teachers, hushed be all creation at the 

sight of Thee : 
Speak Thou to me alone. 

Thomas X Kempis. 



3o6 NOVEMBER i. 



YOU go to your saint and find God working 
and manifest in him. He got near to 
God by some saint of his that went before him, 
or that stood beside him, in whom he saw the 
Divine presence. That saint again lighted his 
fire at some flame before him ; and so the power 
of the sainthoods animates and fills the world. 
So holiness and purity, and truth and patience, 
daring and tenderness, hope and faith, are kept 
constant and pervading things in our humanity. 
Each man has not to begin and work them out 
from the beginning for himself. So there is a 
church of God as well as souls of God in the 
earth. This is the truth of All Saints. 

I. 122, 123. 

Then sudden silence made a little space 

For the One Voice that fills the universe, 

And Christ's own roll-call swept the white camp 

through. 
And lo ! the faithful noiseless moved as thought 
Responsive, yet unconscious of response, 
Their rapt eyes lifted to the shining morn, 
As seeing Him who is invisible. 
He named them, clan by clan, His chosen ones : 
The poor in spirit, and the souls that mourn, 
The meek, and those for righteousness athirst, 
The merciful, the pure in heart, the just, 
The valiant, the forbearing, named He thus. 
For every clan a benediction sweet, 
And sweeter promises of victory. 

Harriet McEwen Kimball. 



NOVEMBER 2. 307 

THE Church is the union of believers, out- 
wardly manifested by the sacraments, but 
having its essence in the personal union of each 
believer's soul with Christ. . . . This Jesus 
must be a true Lord of men. This power which 
draws His disciples to each other must be a 
genuine power. These sacraments must be in- 
trinsically natural utterances of what they try 
to express ; for, lo, everywhere the Church has 
built itself ! In every age, in every land she 
stands, her single life pulsating with the multi- 
tudinous life of which she is composed, the ul- 
timate pulsation coming from the living life of 
her Master, to which every particle of her being 
immediately responds ; the two jewels on her 
breast-plate burning with ever-deepening and 
accumulating richness, and making together the 
clasp which holds about her essential nature the 
robe of her outward form. v. 180. 

Lord, grant us eyes to see and ears to hear 
And souls to love and minds to understand, 
And steadfast faces toward the Holy Land, 

And confidence of hope, and filial fear, 

And citizenship where Thy saints appear 
Before Thee heart in heart and hand in hand, 
And Alleluias where their chanting band 

As waters and as thunders fill the sphere. 

Lord, grant us what Thou wilt, and what Thou wilt 
Deny, and fold us in Thy peaceful fold : 
Not as the world gives, give to us Thine own : 

Inbuild us where Jerusalem is built 

With walls of jasper and with streets of gold, 
And Thou Thyself, Lord Christ, for Corner-Stone. 

Christina Rossetti. 



3o8 NOVEMBER 3. 



AT 7E have sometimes known some men or 
W women, helpless so that their lives 
seemed to be all dependent, who yet, through 
their sickness, had so mounted to a higher life 
and so identified themselves with Christ that 
those on whom they rested found the Christ 
in them and rested upon it. Their sick-rooms 
became churches. Their weak voices spoke 
gospels. The hands they seemed to clasp 
were really clasping theirs. They were de- 
pended on while they seemed to be most de- 
pendent. And when they died, when the faint 
flicker of their life went out, strong men whose 
light seemed radiant, found themselves walk- 
ing in the darkness ; and stout hearts, on 
which theirs used to lean, trembled as if the 
staff and substance of their strength was gone. 

11. 365. 

What is this psalm from pitiable places 
Glad where the messengers of peace have trod 

Whose are these beautiful and holy faces 
Lit with their loving and aflame with God? 

Eager and faint, empassionate and lonely, 
These in their hour shall prophesy again : 

This is His will who hath endured, and only 
Sendeth the promise where He sends the pain. 

Ay unto these distributeth the Giver 
Sorrow and sanctity, and loves them well, 

Grants them a power and passion to deliver 
Hearts from the prison-house and souls from hell. 

F. W. H. Myers. 



NOVEMBER 4. 309 

T^HE Holy Catholic Church, the Communion 
1 of Saints ! Wherever men are praying, 
loving, trusting, seeking, and finding God, it is 
a true body with all its ministries of part to 
part. Nay, shall we stop at that poor line, 
the grave, which all our Christianity is always 
trying to wipe out and make nothing of, and 
which we always insist on widening into a 
great gulf? Shall we not stretch our thought 
beyond, and feel the life-blood of this holy 
church, this living body of Christ, pulsing out 
into the saints who are living there, and com- 
ing back throbbing with tidings of their glori- 
ous and sympathetic life. It is the very power 
of this truth of ours to-day, that it lays hold 
on immortality. l I33 . 

Light is our sorrow for it ends to-morrow, 
Light is our death which cannot hold us fast ; 
So brief a sorrow can be scarcely sorrow, 
Or death be death so quickly past. 

One night, no more, of pain that turns to pleasure, 
One night, no more, of weeping, weeping sore; 
And then the heaped-up measure beyond measure, 
In quietness forevermore. 

Our sails are set to cross the tossing river, 
Our face is set to reach Jerusalem ; 
We toil awhile, but then we rest forever, 
Sing with all Saints and rest with them above. 

Christina Rossetti. 



3io NOVEMBER 5. 



CORRUPTION in political life is really 
scepticism. It is a distrust, a disuse 
which has lasted so long that it has grown 
into disbelief of political principles, of the 
first fundamental truths of the sacredness of 
government and the necessity of righteous- 
ness. And where has such a disbelief come 
from ? We all know well enough. It is 
from the narrow view which has looked at 
machineries, and magnified them till they 
have hid from view the great purposes for 
which all machineries exist. If a man tells 
me that it is absolutely necessary that such 
or such a political party should be maintained 
whether its acts and its men are righteous or 
unrighteous, or else the government will fall, 
that man is an unbeliever. He has lost his 
faith in the first principles of government, 
and he has lost it by persistently tying 
down his study and his soul to second causes, 
to the mere machinery of party. 1. l6l . 

Our fathers to their graves have gone ; 
Their strife is past — their triumph won ; 
But sterner trials wait the race 
Which rises in their honored place — 
A moral warfare with the crime 
And folly of an evil time. 

So let it be. In God's own might 

We gird us for the coming fight, 

And, strong in Him whose cause is ours 

In conflict with unholy powers, 

We grasp the weapons He has given, — 

The Light, and Truth, and Love of Heaven. 

Whittier. 



NOVEMBER 6. 311 

TS there a greater call than that which comes 
* out of the depths of a nation's needs? 
"Tell me what this means, and that, in my 
experience. Tell me how I shall get rid of this 
corruption and that danger. Tell me how I can 
best be governed. Help me to self-control." 
These are the appeals which come out of the 
nation's heart of hearts. And what is it that 
they find to cry to ? In part, at least, are they 
not answered back by personal ambitions, by 
party spirit, by the trickery of selfishness, and 
by the base love of management ? This is the 
misery of politics, — the disproportion between 
the interests which are at stake and the men 
and machineries which deal with them. Those 
interests need the profoundest thought and the 
most absolute devotion. In some degree they 
get it; but how often what they get is only 
prejudice and passion, — the lightest, least rea- 
sonable, most superficial action of our human 
nature. v. 243 , 244 . 

Life or death then, who shall heed it, what we gain or 

what we lose ? 
Fair flies life amid the struggle, and the Cause for each 

shall choose. 

Hear a word, a word in season, for the day is drawing 

nigh, 
When the Cause shall call upon us, some to live and 

some to die ! 

William Morris. 



312 NOVEMBER 7. 



He that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap 
corruption ; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall 
of the Spirit reap life everlasting. — Gal. vi. 8. 

ALL prohibitory measures are negative. That 
they have their use no one can doubt. 
That they have their limits is just as clear. He 
who thinks that nothing but the moral methods 
for the prevention of intemperance and crime 
can do the work is a mere theorist of the closet 
and knows very little about the actual state of 
human nature. But, on the other hand, the 
man who thinks that any strictest system of 
prohibition, most strictly kept in force, could 
permanently keep men from drink, or any other 
vice, knows little of human nature either. That 
nature is too active and too live to be kept right 
by mere negations. You cannot kill any one 
of its appetites by merely starving it. You 
must give it its true food, and so only can you 
draw it off from the poison that it covets. Here 
comes in the absolute necessity of providing 
rational and cheap amusements for the people 
whom our philanthropists are trying to draw 
off from the tavern and the gambling-house. 
Pictures, parks, museums, libraries, music, a 
healthier and happier religion, a brighter, sun- 
nier tone to all our life, — these are the positive 
powers which must come in with every form 
of prohibition and restraint before our poorer 
people can be brought to live a sensible and 
sober life. L 356 , 357 . 



NOVEMBER 8. .313 



V\ 7 HAT is more dreadful than irreverent art 
* * which paints all that it sees, because it sees 
almost nothing, and yet does not dream that 
there is more to see ; which suggests nothing 
because it suspects nothing profounder than the 
flimsy tale it tells, and would fain make us all 
believe that there is no sacredness in woman, 
nor nobleness in man, nor secret in Nature, nor 
dignity in life? Irreverence everywhere is blind- 
ness and not sight. It is the stare which is bold 
because it believes in its heart that there is 
nothing which its insolent intelligence may not 
fathom, and so which finds only what it looks 
for, and makes the world as shallow as it ig- 
norantly dreams the world to be. v . 25 o. 



In the old days of awe and keen-eyed wonder, 
The poet's song with blood-warm truth was rife ; 

He saw the mysteries which circle under 
The outward shell and skin of daily life. 

Nothing to him were fleeting time and fashion, 
His soul was led by the eternal law ; 

There was in him no hope of fame, no passion, 

^But with calm, godlike eyes he only saw 7 . 



Awake, then, thou ! we pine for thy great presence 
To make us feel the soul once more sublime, 

We are of far too infinite an essence 
To rest contented with the lies of Time. 

James Russell Lowell. 



314 NOVEMBER 9. 

THE higher, soberer, spiritual optimism to 
which they come who are able to believe 
that all things work together for good to the 
man or the people that serve Him. . . . 
That was the optimism of Jesus. There was 
no blindness in His eyes, no foolish indis- 
criminate praise of humanity upon His lips. 
He saw the sin of that first century and of 
Jerusalem a thousand times more keenly than 
you see the sins of this nineteenth century 
and of America. But He believed in God. 
Therefore He saw beyond the sin, salvation. 
He never upbraided the sin except to save 
men from it. He never beat the chains 
except to set the captive free ; never, as our 
cynics do, for the mere pleasure of their 
clanking. "Not to condemn the world, but 
to save the world," was His story of His 
mission. And at His cross the shame and 
hope of humankind joined hands. n. 161. 

Grant us hope from earth to rise, 
And to strain with eager eyes 
Towards the promised heavenly prize : 
We beseech Thee, hear us. 

Grant us love Thy love to own, 
Love to live for Thee alone, 
And the power of grace make known : 
We beseech Thee, hear us. 

Lead us daily nearer Thee 
Till at last Thy face we see, 
Crowned with Thine own purity. 
We beseech Thee, hear us. 

Litany of Penitence. 



NOVEMBER 10. 315 



Y\ TE can, and I think we ought to, earnestly 
W assert, when men praise it most loudly, 
that secularism, however we may accept it 
cheerfully, as the only expedient for the present 
time, is not the highest nor the eternal type of 
government. We may strive, by that devotion 
to the spiritual element in national life which 
even pure secularity of public methods still 
leaves possible, to hasten the day, which must 
come if Christ be what we know He is, when 
the idea of Jesus shall be the shaping and mov- 
ing power of the Christian State; and among 
the happy sons of God the Son of God shall 
evidently reign, as the old phrase describes, 
" King of nations as King of saints." 

Influence, 136, 137. 

Thy kingdom come, O God ! 

Thy rule, O Christ, begin ! 
Break with Thine iron rod 

The tyrannies of sin ! 

Where is Thy reign of peace, 

And purity, and love? 
When shall all hatred cease, 

As in the realms above ? 

We pray Thee, Lord, arise, 
And come in Thy great might ; 

Revive our longing eyes, 
Which languish for Thy sight. 

Lewis Hensley. 



316 NOVEMBER n. 

The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. 

II. Cor. iii. 6. 

THE Christian Church has her symbols 
and her ordinances, and she has her 
true and inner life. Her outward ways of 
living really belong with her inward power. 
In a perfectly harmonious world there never 
could be any conflict. In Heaven the outward 
and the inward church shall absolutely corre- 
spond ; but here and now the church may be 
so set upon her symbols and her regularities 
that she shall fail of doing her most perfect 
work and living her most perfect life. The 
Christian may be so bound to rites and cere- 
monies that he loses the God to whom they 
ought to bring him near. The congregation 
may be so jealous for its liturgy that it loses 
the power of prayer. The church at large may 
make so much of its apostolic ministry that it 
loses the present ministry of Christ Himself. 
Here it certainly is true that no symbol is 
doing its true work unless it is educating those 
who use it to do without itself if need be. The 
Christian is misusing his rites and ceremonies, 
unless they are bringing him more personally 
and immediately near to God. The congre- 
gation is not using its liturgy aright if it is 
getting more and more unable to worship ex- 
cept in just that form and order ; and the 
church is suffering and not thriving by her 
ancient ministry if she is making it exclusive 
and mechanical, and calling none the ministers 

of Christ who have not that ordination. 

i. 291, 292. 



NOVEMBER 12. 317 

\17HEN Jesus met the woman of Samaria at 
the well He honored her ; He valued and 
reverenced her soul. When He met Pontius 
Pilate, He honored him. When He dealt day- 
after day with the ripening treachery of Judas 
Iscariot, He honored him. When He found 
John the Baptist making the door ready through 
which He was to enter on His work, He honored 
him. The spiritual nature, the special humanity, 
of each of them seemed to Him, not in any mere 
fiction but in simple truth, to be a beautiful and 
precious thing. His honor for that was the soul 
of His courteousness. And then the special 
words He said, whether of sympathy or of re- 
buke, might be just what the special occasion 
bade them be. Different as they were, they 
were all courteous alike because of this personal 
honor and value that filled them all. There is 
no complete courtesy that has not such a soul 
and such a body, — a soul of honor for the in- 
dividual, living in and uttering itself through the 
intelligent recognition of the class condition. 

Influence, 116, 117. 

Man he loved 
As man ; and to the mean and the obscure, 
And all the homely in their homely works, 
Transferred a courtesy which had no air 
Of condescension. Wordsworth. 



318 NOVEMBER 13. 



T^HERE is something so sublimely positive in 
Nature. She never kills for the mere sake 
of killing ; but every death is but one step in 
the vast weaving of the web of life. She has 
no process of destruction which, as you turn it 
to the other side and look at it in what you 
know to be its truer light, you do not see to be 
a process of construction. She gets rid of her 
wastes by ever new plans of nutrition. This is 
what gives her such a courageous, hopeful, and 
enthusiastic look, and makes men love her as a 
mother and not fear her as a tyrant. They see 
by small signs, and dimly feel, this positiveness 
of her workings which it is the glory of natural 
science to reveal more and more. 1. 359 . 



Verily now is our season of seed, 

Now in our Autumn ; and Earth discerns 

Them that have served her, in them that can read, 

Glassing where under the surface she burns 

Quick at her wheel, while the fuel, decay, 

Brightens the fire of renewal ; and we ? 

Death is the word of a bovine day 

Know you the heart of the springing To-be. 

George Meredith. 



NOVEMBER 14. 319 

GOD is infinitely various. His great arms can 
hold the infant like a mother, and build 
a strong wall about the mature man who is 
fighting the noonday fight of life, and lay the 
bridge of sunset over which the old man's feet 
may walk serenely into the eternal day. . . . 
How shall the soul carry with it the sense of 
safety and assurance in God, which it has won 
within His earthly care, forth into this unknown, 
untrodden vastness whither it now must go ? 
Only in one way ; only by deepening as deeply 
as possible its assurance that it is God — not ac- 
cident, not its own ingenuity, not its brethren's 
kindness — that it is God who made this earthly 
life so rich and happy. God is too vast, too in- 
finite for earth. He is too vast for time, and 
needs eternity. Wrapped into Him the soul 
may be not merely resigned ; it may be even 
impatient to explore those larger regions where 
the power which has made itself known to it 
here shall be able to display to it all the com- 
pleteness of its nature and its love. . . . The 
child of God may wish for eternity, sure that 
there upon the vaster fields he shall see vaster 
exhibitions of that power and grace which he 
has learned completely to believe in here. 

11. 326, 327. 

A little longer still — patience, beloved : 
A little longer still, ere heaven unroll 

The glory, and the brightness, and the wonder, 
Eternal and divine, that waits thy soul. 

A little longer, and thy heart, beloved, 
Shall beat forever with a love divine ; 

And joy so pure, so mighty, so eternal, 
No mortal knows, and lives, shall then be thine. 

Hymns of the Ages. 



320 NOVEMBER 15. 

F^vELIGHT, enthusiasm, hope, content, — 
these are the true conditions of a Chris- 
tian life, just as song is the true condition of 
the bird, or color of the rose. But just as the 
bird is still a bird although it cannot sing, and 
the rose is still a rose although its red grows 
dull and faded in some dark, close room where 
it is compelled to grow, — so the Christian is a 
Christian still, even although his soul is dark 
with doubt, and he goes staggering on, fearing 
every moment that he will fall, never daring 
to look up and hope. v. i 73 . 



Shadows to-day, while shadows show God's Will. 

Light were not good except He sent us light 

Shadows to-day, because this day is night 
Whose marvels and whose mysteries fulfil 
Their course and deep in darkness serve Him still. 

Thou dim aurora, on the extremest height 

Of airy summits wax not over bright ; 
Refrain thy rose, refrain thy daffodil. 
Until God's Word go forth to kindle thee 

And garland thee and bid thee stoop to us, 
Blush in the heavenly choirs and glance not down : 
To-day we race in darkness for a crown, 
In darkness for beatitude to be, 

In darkness for the city luminous. 

Christina Rossetti. 



NOVEMBER 16. 321 



Behold, God himself is with us for our captain. 

II. Chron. xiii. 12. 

ST. PAUL has a noble verse which says 
that "experience worketh hope." It 
must, if it is full of Christ. The soul that 
is getting deeper and deeper into the certain 
knowledge of Him must be learning that it has 
no right to fear ; that however hopeless things 
look there can be nothing but success for 
every good cause in the hand of Christ. It is 
a noble process for a man's life that gradually 
changes the cold dogma that "truth is strong 
and must prevail' ' into a warm enthusiastic 
certainty that "my Christ must conquer." 
It is terrible to see a man calling himself a 
Christian who despairs more of the world the 
longer he lives in it. It shows that he is 
letting the world's darkness come between 
him and his Lord's light. It shows that he 
is not near enough to Christ. 

And with the growing hopefulness there 
comes a growing courage. How timid we are 
at first! I become a Christian, and it seems 
as if just to get this soul of mine saved were 
all that I could dare to try ; but as the 
Saviour's strength becomes more manifest to 
me, as I know Him more, I see that He is 
able to do much more than that. I begin 
to aspire to have a little part in the great 
conquest of the world in which He is en- 
gaged. And so the Soldier of the Cross at 
last is out in the very thick of the battle, 
striking at all his Master's enemies in the 
perfect assurance of his Master's strength. 

11. 57. 



322 NOVEMBER 17. 

T HOPE that many of you have read the in- 
* teresting book which gives an account of 
the Personal Life of David Livingstone. It is a 
noble record of a noble history. But the great 
beauty of his life as it comes out there is in the 
centralness of his religion. Two of the greatest 
interests of the human mind and soul were al- 
ways with him — science and philanthropy. He 
opened the desert and traced the mysterious 
rivers, and watched the wanderings of the stars. 
He trampled out the slave trade in whole regions 
of its worst brutality ; but, at the heart of them, 
the man's science and philanthropy both got 
their light from his religion. He was first, last, 
and always and above all things the Christian 
and the Christian Missionary, carrying the glo- 
rious Gospel of the grace of God to the most 
miserably benighted of His children. He refuses 
to be called the mere scientist or the mere phi- 
lanthropist. In the light of God he sees light, 
and he makes light in the mystery and sin of 
the Dark Continent. Therefore his fame has 
among the scientists and the philanthropists its 
own peculiar beauty. ni. 109, no. 



My times are in Thy Hand, O Lord ! Go Thou 
with me and I am safe. And above all make me 
useful in promoting Thy cause of peace and good- 
will among men. 

David Livingstone. 



NOVEMBER 18. 323 

THE missionary idea that man is God's child 
gives birth to two enthusiasms : one for 
the Father, one for the child ; one for God, one 
for man. . . . Who can tell, as the missionary 
stands there preaching the salvation to his dusky 
congregation, which fire burns the warmest in his 
heart ? Is it the love for God or for his brethren ? 
Is it the Master who died for him, or these men 
for whom also He died, from whom his strongest 
inspiration comes ? No one can tell. He can- 
not tell himself. The Lord Himself in His own 
parable foretold the noble, sweet, inextricable 
confusion. " Inasmuch as ye have done it unto 
one of these ye have done it unto Me." But 
surely in the blended power of the two enthusi- 
asms there is the strongest pow r er of magna- 
nimity. All that the mystic feels of personal 
love of God, all that the philanthropist knows 
of love for man, these two, each purifying and 
deepening and heightening the other, unite in 
the soul of him who goes to tell the men whom 
he loves as his brethren, about God whom he 
loves as his Father. n. i 79 , 180. 

Why they have never known the way before — 
Why hundreds stand outside Thy mercy's door — 
I know not : but I ask, dear Lord, that Thou 
Wouldst lead them now ! 

Why in the hard and thorny way they press 
Unloved, uncomforted, with none to bless, 
In living death, I know not : but spare Thou, 
And lead them on. 

C. C. Fraser Tytler. 



324 NOVEMBER 19. 

If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, 
even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God 
bring with Him. — I. Thess. iv.' 14. 

TT is a beautiful connection, one whose mys- 
terious beauty we are always learning more 
and more, that the deeper our spiritual experi- 
ence of Christ becomes, the more our soul's 
life really hangs on His life as its Saviour and 
continual Friend, the more real becomes to us 
the unquenched life of those who have gone 
from us to be with Him. \. 226 . 



Lord, make me one with Thine own faithful ones, 

Thy saints who love Thee and are loved by Thee ; 

Till the day break and till the shadows flee 
At one with them in alms and orisons : 
At one with him who toils and him who runs, 

And him who yearns for union yet to be ; 

At one with all who throng the crystal sea 
And wait the setting of our moons and suns. 
Ah, my beloved ones gone on before, 

Who looked not back with hand upon the plough ! 
If beautiful to me while still in sight, 

How beautiful must be your aspects now ; 
Your unknown, well-known aspects in that light 
Which clouds shall never cloud forevermore. 

Christina Rossetti, 



NOVEMBER 20. 325 



NOWHERE is it more necessary that the 
Church should realize the largeness of 
her life, should know that she is not the Clergy 
only but the total people, than where she hears 
herself called upon to take interest in, and give 
her help for, the solution of the pressing social 
and economical problems of the day. Those 
calls are growing constant and urgent. To 
these calls she must not close her ears. The 
Church of Christ must be a leader in the ad- 
justment of the relations of mankind and the 
building of the better society which is to come. 
Only, what is the Church, and how shall she 
do this work ? Not merely by Ministers study- 
ing in their libraries and preaching from their 
pulpits — though the earnest thought and help- 
ful word must not be lacking, — but by Chris- 
tian men and women in their shops and homes, 
growing more rich in sympathy, and dealing in 
larger daily justice with their fellow-men. The 
great questions which are bewildering us are to 
find their solution quite as largely in the fields 
of active work as in the laboratories of the 
scholars. The Church is dealing with these 
questions wherever Churchmen are trying to do 
their duty with the fullest light. There is much 
hope in the Christian Social Union, which has 
been organized for the study of the theory of 
social questions. I invite to it your attention 
and regard. There is still more hope in the 
growing desire of all men to be just and fair, 
and to live with their fellow-men as brethren in 
the family of God. convention address. 



326 NOVEMBER 21. 

And there came a traveller unto the rich man y 
and he spared to take of his own flock , and of his 
own herd, to dress for the wayfaring man that 
was come unto him. — II. Sam. xii. 4. 

YOU cannot do your duty to the poor by a 
society. Your life must touch their life. , 
You try to work solely by a society, and what 
does it come to ? Is it not the old story of the 
book of Samuel ? The traveller appeals to 
you, and you spare to take of your own 
thought and time and sympathy to give to the 
wayfaring man that is come to you. They 
are too precious. You say : " There is 
thought, time, sympathy, down at the charity 
bureau to which I have a right by virtue of the 
contribution I have made. Go down and get 
a ticket's worth of that." n. 354 . 

My brother, I am hungry : give me food 
Such as my Father gives me at his board ; 
He has for many years been to thee good, 
Thou canst a morsel, then, to me afford. 
I do not ask of thee a grain of that 
Thou offerest when I call on thee for bread ; 
This is not of the wine nor olive fat, 
But those who eat of this like thee are dead. 
I ask the love the Father has for thee, 
That thou should'st give it back to me again ; 
This shall my soul from pangs of hunger free, 
And on my parched spirit fall like rain ; 
Then thou wilt prove a brother to my need, 
For in the Cross of Christ thou, too, canst bleed. 

Jones Very. 



NOVEMBER 22. 327 

Hereby perceive we the love of God, because He 
laid down His life for us : and we ought to lay 
down our lives for the brethren. 

I. John iii. 16. 

THE wayfarers come to us continually, and 
they do not come by chance. God sends 
them. And as they come, with their white faces 
and their poor scuffling feet, they are our judges. 
Not merely by whether we give, but by how 
we give and by what we give, they judge us. 
One man sends them entirely away. Another 
drops a little easy, careless, unconscientious 
money into their hands. Another man washes 
and clothes them. Another man teaches them 
lessons. Thank God there are some men and 
women here and there, full of the power of the 
Gospel, who cannot rest satisfied till they have 
opened their very hearts and given the poor 
wayfaring men the only thing which really is 
their own, themselves, their faith, their energy, 
their hope in God. Of such true charity-givers 
may He who gave Himself for us increase the 
multitude among us every day ! n. 354 . 

And the voice that was calmer than silence said, 
" Lo it is I, be not afraid ! 

The Holy Supper is kept, indeed, 

In whatso we share with another's need ; 

Not what we give, but what we share, — 

For the gift without the giver is bare ; 

Who gives himself with his alms feeds three, — 

Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me." 

James Russell Lowell. 



328 NOVEMBER 23. 

WHEN I suffer or when I enjoy, — when 
down these nerves the quick agony 
shoots and leaves me trembling like a poor 
tree which the blast has shivered, or when 
through the healthy blood peace runs like the 
sunlight on a flowing river, — when, in the 
aggregate of life, beneath affections, thoughts, 
dreams, memories, desires, there is always 
felt this human body with its pangs and 
blisses, what a noble meaning there is in it 
all as it lies open to the influence of Jesus ! 
" Lo, I am human!" And all the dignity 
and pathos of humanity surrounds me. 
^'Behold in what a disturbed and struggling 
world I live!" And hope and fear, — twin 
captains of the soul, — patience and expecta- 
tion spring to life. "See here, touching this 
very flesh of mine, the fingers of the hand 
whose heart is my Father's," and through 
the passions which the body feels opens a 
way into the deepest woes and loftiest 
pleasures, which can belong only to the 

SOnS Of God. Influence, 173. 174. 

But when the sharp strokes flesh and heart run through, 

For thee and not another : only known, 

In all the universe, through sense of thine ; 

Not caught by eye or ear, not felt by touch, 

Nor apprehended by the spirit's sight, 

But only by the hidden, tortured nerves, 

In all their incommunicable pain, — 

God speaks Himself to us, as mothers speak 

To their own babes, upon the tender flesh 

With fond familiar touches close and dear ; — 

Because He cannot choose a softer way 

To make us feel that He Himself is near, 

And each apart His own beloved and known. 

Ugo Bassi. Sermon in the Hospital, 



NOVEMBER 24. 329 

HTHE construction of life is everywhere the 
1 same. Wherever the background is lost, 
the foreground grows false and thin. What is 
this foolish realism in our literature but the loss 
of the background of the ideal, without which 
every real is base and sordid ? In how many 
bright books there is no God treading on the 
high places of the earth ; nay, there are no high 
places of the earth for God to tread upon. What 
is the practical man's contempt for theory ? 
What is the modern man's contempt for his- 
tory ? What is the ethical man's contempt for 
religion ? All of them are the denials of the 
background of life. All of them therefore are 
thin and weak. v. 122. 

Yet is it just 
That here, in memory of all books which lay 
Their sure foundations in the heart of man, 
Whether by native prose, or numerous verse ; 

Tis just that in behalf of these, the works, 
And of the men that framed them, whether known, 
Or sleeping nameless in their scattered graves, 
That I should here assert their rights, attest 
Their honors, and should, once for all, pronounce 
Their benediction ; speak of them as Powers 
For ever to be hallowed ; only less, 
For what we are and what we may become, 
Than Nature's self, which is the breath of God, 
Or His pure Word by miracle revealed. 

Wordsworth. 



330 NOVEMBER 25. 



HP HE great procession of the year, sacred to 
our best human instincts with the accumu- 
lated reverence of ages, — Advent, Christmas, 
Epiphany, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension, 
Whitsunday, — leads those who walk in it, at 
least once every year, past all the great Chris- 
tian facts, and, however careless and selfish be 
the preacher, will not leave it in his power to 
keep them from his people. The Church year, 
too, preserves the personality of our religion. It 
is concrete and picturesque. The historical 
Jesus is forever there. It lays each life con- 
tinually down beside the perfect life, that it 
may see at once its imperfection and its hope. 

Preaching, 91. 



O God, of unchangeable power and eternal light, 

look favorably on Thy whole Church, that wonderful 

and sacred mystery ; and, by the tranquil operation of 

Thy perpetual Providence, carry out the work of man's 

salvation ; and let the whole world feel and see that 

things which were cast down are being raised up, and 

things which had grown old are being made new, and 

all things are returning to perfection through Him from 

whom they took their origin, even through our Lord 

Jesus Christ. 

Ancient Collects. Bright. 



NOVEMBER 26. 331 



I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, 
in necessities, i?i persecutions, in distresses, for 
Chris fs sake : for when I ai?i weak, then am I 
strong. — II. Cor. xii. 10. 

"THERE is a noble dignity about those words. 
They are not the words of one who is 
merely trying to console himself for the lack 
of comfort, and to hold out till comfort shall 
bestow itself upon him. They are the words 
of a man whom circumstances, which he 
knows to be the hands of God, have led into a 
certain life. He has not led himself there ; he 
has not chosen poverty ; he has not tried to be 
poor ; but being in that land of poverty, he 
looks about, and lo ! it is not barren. It has 
pleasures, revelations, cultivations of its own. 
It has its own peculiar relationships to God. 
It is not necessary to say whether it is poorer 
or richer than the other land, the land of pro- 
fusion and abundance. It is a true land by it- 
self ; and Paul, who lives there, honors and 
respects it, and so it honors him and gives him 
freely its own peculiar strength ; and he 
stands in the midst of it and cries, "When I 
am weak, then am I strong." v. 162. 



332 NOVEMBER 27. 



YOU cannot see the distant heaven. You 
cannot hear the songs of angels. You 
cannot even say assuredly that you know the 
love of God, — but you do know that to be 
brave and true and pure is better than to be 
cowardly and false and foul. You do know 
that there are men and women all about you 
suffering, some of them dying, for sympathy 
and help. You do know that whether God 
loves you or not, right is right ! Oh, how 
these great simple assurances come out when 
the higher lights of the loftier experiences grow 
dark ! I will not say, I dare not say, that God 
lets the heavenly light be darkened in order 
that these earthly duties may appear. I only 
say that when the cloud stretches itself across 
the heavens, then, underneath the cloud and 
shut out from the sunshine, the imprisoned 
soul still finds for itself a rich life of duty, a 
life of self-control, a life of charity, a life of 

g^Wth. V. 174, i75. 



Who knows ? God knows : and what He knows 

Is well and best. 

The darkness hideth not from Him, but glows 

Clear as the morning or the evening rose 

Of east or west. 

Christina Rossetti. 



NOVEMBER 28. 333 

A MAN has no right to give to the tint on his 
parlor walls that anxiety of thought which 
belongs only to the justification of the ways of 
God to man. And why ? Mainly, I suppose, 
because the man who has expended his highest 
powers upon the lightest themes has no new, 
greater seriousness to give to the great problems 
when they come, and so either avoids them al- 
together or else, by a strange perversion, turns 
back and gives them the light consideration 
which was what he ought to have given to his 
headache or the color of his walls. v . 247 , 24 s. 

High above these things that change is the wise man 

with spirit well taught, 
Who cares not what he feels, 
Nor from what quarter blows the shifting breeze, 
If but the holy motive of his mind go onward to the 

due and longed-for end. 
For thus will he be able to remain the same, unshaken, 
Pointing the simple eye of motive 
Through many changing chances straight at Me. 
The purer that his eye of motive is, 
The straighter sails the vessel through the many 

storms. 

By two wings man is lifted from the things of earth — 

Simplicity and purity. 

Simplicity must be the keynote to his motive ; 

Purity the keynote to his love. 

His motive aims at God ; 

His love embraces and enjoys Him. 

Thomas a Kempis. 



334 NOVEMBER 29. 

T ET us give thanks to God upon Thanks- 
giving Day. Nature is beautiful, and 
fellow-men are dear, and duty is close 
beside us, and He is over us and in us. 
What more do we want, except to be more 
thankful and more faithful, less complaining 
of our trials and our time, and more worthy 
of the tasks and privileges He has given us. 
We want to trust Him with a fuller trust, 
and so at last to come to that high life 
where we shall "Be careful for nothing, 
but in everything, by prayer and supplica- 
tion, with thanksgiving, let our request be 
made known unto God," for that and that 
alone is peace. 1. 173 . 

For flowers unsought, in desert places 
Flashing enchantment on the sight; 
For radiance on familiar faces 
As they passed upward into light ; 

For blessings of the fruitful season, 
For work and rest, for friends and home, 
For the great gifts of thought and reason, — 
To praise and bless Thee, Lord, we come. 

And when we gather up the story 
Of all Thy mercies flowing free, 
Crown of them all, that hope of glory, 
Of growing ever nearer Thee. 

* Eliza Scudder. 



NOVEMBER 30. 335 

BELIEVE so fully that the Christian min- 
istry in the next fifty years is to have a 
nobler opportunity of usefulness and power 
than it has ever had in the past, that I would 
gladly call, if 1 could, with the voice of a 
trumpet to the brave, earnest, cultivated 
young men who are to live in the next fifty 
years to enter into it, and share the privilege 
of that work together. 

And the word with which I would summon 
them should be that great word " service.' ' 
" Whosoever will be chief among you, let him 
be your servant," Jesus said. . . . And then 
He stretched out His arms, and with that self- 
assertion which no other son of man has ever 
dared to make, He bade them see the illustra- 
tion of what He had just told them in Himself. 
" Even as the Son of Man came not to be min- 
istered unto but to minister," He said. v . 188. 

Almighty God, who didst give such grace unto Thy 
holy Apostle Saint Andrew, that he readily obeyed the 
calling of Thy Son Jesus Christ, and followed Him 
without delay ; Grant unto us all, that we, being called 
by Thy holy Word, may forthwith give up ourselves 
obediently to fulfil Thy holy commandments ; through 
the same Jesus Christ our Lord. 

Book of Common Prayer. 



336 DECEMBER i. 



TPHE man is weak and useless who, however 
* devoutly, looks only for the repetition of 
past miracles, good and great as those miracles 
were in their own time. Solemnly and surely 
— to some men terribly and awfully, to other 
men joyously and enthusiastically — it is becom- 
ing clear to men that the future cannot be what 
the past has been. The world of the days to 
come is to be different from the world that has 
been. Every interest of life is altered ; govern- 
ment, society, business, education, all is altered, 
all is destined to alter more and more. Only 
these two elements remain the same, — God 
and man ! What then shall we expect ? That 
God will guide man and supply him as He has 
in all the times which are past and gone, but 
that the new government and guidance will be 
different for the new days. He who believes 
that, looks forward to changes of faith and 
changes of life without a fear, for underneath 
all the changes is the unchangeableness of God. 

V. 31, 32. 

For Destiny is but the breath of God 
Still moving in us, the last fragment left 
Of our unf alien nature, waking oft 
Within our thought, to beckon us beyond 
The narrow circle of the seen and known, 
And always tending to a noble end. 



All things are fitly cared for, and the Lord 
Will watch as kindly o'er the exodus 
Of us His servants now, as in old time. 

James Russell Lowell. 



DECEMBER 2. 337 

\I7HAT tender charity and what unsparing 
* * scrutiny there must be all over a world 
that is waiting for the Judgment Day. At last 
He comes ! Where has He been ? Not far 
away. The absence of the Parable is but a 
figure for the suspended judgment, the holding 
back of consequences till probation is com- 
plete. The king's coming in, what is that then 
but just the letting loose of consequences that 
have been held back in His hand, to fly to their 
causes. Everywhere the reward seeks the 
goodness, and the misery seeks the sin, and so 
the world is judged. 

Where the good man stands with his eye on 
God is Heaven. Where the wicked man 
cowers, is Hell. No longer joy gilds the guilt, 
and misery no longer vexes the goodness. The 
setting free of joy and sorrow from their long 
unnatural attachments to seek their fitness of 
character, that is the coming in of the King, 
that is the Judgment Day. Mss . 

Gather you, gather you, angels of God — 

Freedom, and Mercy, and Truth ; 
Come ! for the Earth is grown coward and old, 

Come down and renew us her youth, 
Wisdom, Self-Sacrifice, Daring and Love, 
Haste to the battle-field, stoop from above, 

To the Day of the Lord at hand. 

Charles Kingsley. 



338 DECEMBER 3. 



Above it stood the seraphim : each one had six 
wings ; with twain he covered his face, and with 
twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did 
fly. — Is. vi. 2. 

ISAIAH says of the seraphim not merely that 
their eyes were covered, but that they were 
covered with their wings. Now the wings rep- 
resent the active powers. It is with them that 
movement is accomplished and change achieved 
and obedience rendered ; so that it seems to me 
that what the whole image means is this, — that 
it is with the powers of action and obedience 
that the powers of insight and knowledge are 
veiled. . . . The mystery and awfulness of God 
is a conviction reached through serving Him. . . . 
Behold, what a lofty idea of reverence is 
here ! It is no palsied idleness. The figure 
which we see is not flung down upon the 
ground, despairing and dismayed. It stands upon 
its feet ; it is alert and watchful ; it is waiting 
for commandments ; it is eager for work ; but 
all the time its work makes it more beautifully, 
completely, devoutly reverent of Him for whom 
the work is done. The more work the more 
reverence. So man grows more mysterious and 
great to you, oh, servant of mankind, the longer 
that you work for him. Is it not so ? So Nature 
grows more mysterious to you, oh, naturalist, 
the longer that you serve her. Is it not so ? So 
God grows more sublime and awful as we labor 
for Him in the tasks which He has set us. 
Would you grow rich in reverence ? Go work, 
work, work with all your strength ; so let life 
deepen around you and display its greatness. 

V. 259, 260. 



DECEMBER 4. 339 

Ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein 
the Son of Man cometh. — Matt. xxv. 13. 

T ET us do what we ought and what we can 
^ for our own souls at once. For the judg- 
ment is coming not only at the last day, but 
all the time. Every day the power that we 
will not use is failing from us. Every day the 
God whose voice speaks through all the inevi- 
table necessities of our moral life is saying of 
the men who keep their talents wrapped in 
napkins, "Take the talent from him ; " and 
since he will not enter into the perfect light 

he must be "cast into the outer darkness.' ' 

1. 156. 

Why do we heap huge mounds of years 

Before us and behind, 
And scorn the little days that pass 

Like angels on the wind? 

Each turning round a small sweet face 

As beautiful as near; 
Because it is so small a face 

We will not see it clear: 

And so it turns from us, and goes 

Away in sad disdain : 
Though we would give our lives for it, 

It never comes again. 

Dinah Muloch CraiKo 



340 DECEMBER 5. 

H^HE real question everywhere is whether 
* the world, distracted and confused as 
everybody sees that it is, is going to be 
patched up and restored to what it used to 
be, or whether it is going forward into a 
quite new and different kind of life, whose 
exact nature nobody can pretend to foretell, 
but which is to be distinctly new, unlike 
the life of any age which the world has 
seen already. ... It is impossible that 
the old conditions, so shaken and broken, 
can ever be repaired and stand just as they 
stood before. The time has come when 
something more than mere repair and resto- 
ration of the old is necessary. The old must 
die and a new must come forth out of its 
tomb. v. 30, ,i. 

What is this, the sound and rumor? What is this 

that all men hear, 
Like the wind in hollow valleys, when the storm is 

drawing near, 
Like the rolling on of ocean in the eventide of fear ? 
'Tis the people marching on. 

" On we march then, we, the workers, and the rumor 

that ye hear 
Is the blended sound of battle and deliv'rance drawing 

near ; 
For the hope of every creature, is the banner that we 
bear." 

And the world is marching on. 

William Morris. 



DECEMBER 6. 341 



For we must all appear before the judgment seat 
of Christ ; that every one may receive the things 
done in his body, according to that he hath done, 
whether it be good or bad. — II. Cor. v. 10. 

/^vUT of all the lower presences with which 
^^ they have made themselves contented ; 
out of all the chambers where the little easy 
judges sit with their compromising codes of 
conduct, with their ideas worked over and 
worked down to suit the conditions of this 
earthly life ; out of all these partial and imper- 
fect judgment chambers, when men die they 
are all carried up into the presence of the per- 
fect righteousness, and are judged by that. All 
previous judgments go for nothing unless they 
find their confirmation there. iv. 63, 6 4 . 

O God the Son, Redeemer of the world, 

Have mercy upon us. 
O our One Salvation, 

Save us. 
O Perfect Holiness, 

Sanctify us. 
By Thy sitting on the right hand of the Father, 
where Thou ever makest intercession for us : 
Let Thy servants serve Thee, O Lord, and let 
them see Thy face. 

Book of Litanies. Neale. 



342 DECEMBER 7. 



TT is our punishment that Jesus shares. It 
is our woe down into which His love 
has brought Him. We hang upon our cross 
and He hangs on His beside us. For our cross 
we can blame none but ourselves. Our sin has 
brought us what we suffer, but His cross no sin 
of His has built. It is the wickedness in which 
we have so deep a part, which decrees that it 
shall be a cross and not a throne. There comes, 
as the result of all, just exactly what is ex- 
pressed in the strange deep words of the peni- 
tent thief to his mocking comrade, — words 
which the soul may turn and address to itself, 
invoking from itself a solemn repentance and 
hate of sin as it sees its Saviour a sharer in the 
suffering which its sin brings : " Dost not thou 
fear God, seeing thou art in the same con- 
demnation ? And we indeed justly, for we 
receive the due reward of our deeds ; but this 
man hath done nothing amiss.' ' 1. 202 . 

Beside Thy Cross I hang on my Cross in shame, 

My wounds, weakness, extremity cry to Thee : 

Bid me also to Paradise, also me 

For the glory of Thy Name. 

Christina Rossetti. 



DECEMBER 8. 343 

"THE ship looks forward fearlessly to the new 
ocean with its new stars and new winds, 
for the same captain will sail her there who 
has sailed her here, and the fact that he will 
sail her there otherwise than he sails her here 
will be only the sign of how sleepless and 
watchful is his care. v. 32 . 

I. 
" Friend, why goest thou forth 
When ice-hills drift from the north 
And crush together? " 

" The Voice that me doth call 
Heeds not the ice-hill's fall, 

Nor wind, nor weather.' * 

II. 
" But friend, the night is black ; 
Behold the driving wrack 

And wild seas under!" 

" My straight and narrow bark 

Fears not the threatening dark, 

Nor storm, nor thunder.' 



IV. 
" Hark ! Who is he that knocks 
With slow and dreadful shocks 
The walls to sever? " 

" It is my Master's call, 
1 go, whate'er befall ; 

Farewell forever." 

Richard Watson Gilder. 



344 DECEMBER 9. 



A S the spiritual life with which the Bible deals 
**> is the flower of human life, so the Book 
which deals with it is the flower of human books. 
But it is not thereby an unhuman book. It is 
the most human of all books. In it is seen the 
everlasting struggle of the man-life to fulfil it- 
self in God. All books in which that univer- 
sal struggle of humanity is told are younger 
brothers, — less clear and realized and developed 
utterances of that which is so vivid in the his- 
tory of the sacred people and is perfect in the 
picture of the divine Man. I will not be puzzled, 
but rejoice when I find in all the sacred books, 
in all deep, serious books of every sort, fore- 
gleams and adumbrations of the lights and 
shadows which lie distinct upon the Bible page. 
I will seek and find the assurance that my Bible 
is inspired of God not in virtue of its distance 
from, but in virtue of its nearness to, the human 
experience and heart. It is in that experience 
and heart that the real inspiration of God is 
given, and thence it issues into the written 

book : 

" Out of the heart of Nature rolled 
The Burdens of the Bible old. 
The Litanies of nations came 
Like the volcano's tongue of flame ; 
Up from the burning core below 
The Canticles of love and woe." 

That book is most inspired which most worthily 
and deeply tells the story of the most inspired 
life. v. 17. 



DECEMBER 10. 345 



VOU are in God's world; you are God's 
child. Those things you cannot change; 
the only peace and rest and happiness for you is 
to accept them and rejoice in them. When God 
speaks to you, you must not make believe to 
yourself that it is the wind blowing or the tor- 
rent falling from the hill. You must know that 
it is God. You must gather up the whole power 
of meeting Him. You must be thankful that 
life is great and not little. You must listen as 
if listening were your life. And then, then only 
can come peace. All other sounds will be caught 
up into the prevailing richness of that voice of 
God. The lost proportions will be perfectly re- 
stored. Discord will cease ; harmony will be 
complete. v. ss. 



Long and dark the nights, dim and short the days, 
Mounting weary heights on our weary ways, 

Thee our God we praise. 
Scaling heavenly heights by unearthly ways, 
Thee our God we praise all our nights and days, 

Thee our God we praise. 

Christina Rossetti. 



346 DECEMBER n. 

HTHE rich men of our community must be 
truly rich themselves, or they can have 
nothing worth giving to the poor ; nothing 
with which they can permanently help their 
poorer brethren. Only a class of men inde- 
pendent, intelligent, and glorying in struggle 
themselves, can really send independence, in- 
telligence, and the dignity of struggle, down 
through a whole city's life. This is the reason 
why your selfish and idle rich man, who has 
neither of these great human properties, does 
nothing for the permanent help of poverty. 
The money which he gives is no symbol. It 
means nothing. O let us be sure that the 
first necessity for giving the poor man charac- 
ter is that the rich man should have character 
to give him. n. 353 . 

Our gaieties, our luxuries, 

Our pleasures and our glee, 
Mere insolence and wantonness, 

Alas ! thev feel to me. 



The joy that does not spring from joy 

Which I in others see, 
How can 1 venture to employ. 

Or find it joy for me? 

Arthur Hugh Clough. 



DECEMBER 12. 347 



J\ A EN are coming more and more to feel that 
the rich man does not do his duty by the 
poor man, the rich class does not really take of 
its own and give it to the poor class, unless by 
some outflow of itself it . . . sends a perpet- 
ual stream of independence, intelligence, and 
struggle, down through the social mass, making 
the spiritual privileges of those who are living 
on the heights of life the possession and inspira- 
tion of the waiting, unsuccessful, discouraged 
souls that lie below. 11. 342. 

" Lazarus, come forth ! " Out from the gloom, 

Haggard and gaunt and dazed, there came 
He who had lain within the tomb 

Until the Blessed One called his name; 
But, in death's" night, he heard the sound ; 

Forth to the shuddering gazer's sight 
He staggered, in foul grave-clothes bound, 

And breathed at last in life and light. 

" Lazarus, come forth ! " The people lies 

With mind in bonds, with soul all dead ; 
Shall not Christ, through us, bid it rise? 

Through us, shall not His words be said ? 
Strong in His love — strong with the strength 

He gives, shall we not, in His might, 
Call forth our Lazarus at length 

From its dark gloom to life and light? 

W. C. Bennet. 



348 DECEMBER 13. 

Phillips Bi-ooks born, 1835. 

We, we have chosen our path — 
Path to a clear-purposed goal, 
Path of advance ! — but it leads 
A long steep journey, through sunk 
Gorges, o'er mountains in snow ! 

Matthew Arnold. 

T T OW large a part of our godward life is trav- 
elled not by clear landmarks seen far off 
in the promised land, but as travellers climb a 
mountain peak, by putting footstep after foot- 
step slowly and patiently into the prints which 
some one going before us, with keener sight, with 
stronger nerves, tied to us by the cord of saintly 
sympathy, has planted deep into the pathless 
snow of the bleak distance that stretches up be- 
tween humanity and God. 1. I23 . 

I am He that made all saints ; 

I gave them My good influence, 

I showed them glory. 

I called them by My favour, 

I drew them by My pity, 

I led them on through many a temptation, 

I poured upon them wondrous consolations, 

I gave them strength unto the end, 

I crowned their suffering, 

I know them first and last, 

I throw My arms, with love past telling, round them, 

I must be praised in all My saints. 

Thoa\as a Kempis. 



DECEMBER 14. 349 

CHRIST'S powerful death is the great re- 
newing spectacle of human life. When 
men look at it, there comes up out of their 
hearts the pattern of divinity which is there, 
their sonship to the Holy One ; and to attain 
that holiness, to realize it perfectly, becomes 
the passion of their lives. And it is love for 
the Sufferer which makes that passion, — love 
with its two perfect elements perfectly com- 
bined. It is admiration for what He is doing, 
the unselfishness, the heroism, the godlike 
patience. And it is gratitude because He is 
doing it for us. It is these two which blend 
into the passionate devotion with which a man, 
in the great phrase of the Gospels, "follows 
after Christ, " — seeks, that is, with his own 
essential sonship, to realize in himself, the 
sonship of the Son of God. influence, 52 . 

THE SONG OF A HEATHEN. 

{Sojourning in Galilee, A.D. 32.) 

If Jesus Christ is a man, — 

And only a man, — I say 
That of all mankind I cleave to him, 

And to him will I cleave alway. 

If Jesus Christ is a God, — 

And the only God, — I swear 
I will follow Him through Heaven and hell, 

The earth, the sea, and the air ! 

Richard Watson Gilder. 



350 DECEMBER 15. 



ST. PAUL would have men live here on earth, 
yet conscious of their capacity of Heaven. 
He would have earth real, clear, definite, dis- 
tinct, shining with its own color, holding us 
with its own grasp ; and yet he would have 
man so conscious of his larger self that the very 
definiteness of what he is to-day makes real to 
him the greater thing that he will be in the vast 
world beyond. 

- Is not that what we want ? The life of earth 
now, the life of heaven by and by, — each clear 
with its own glory ! And our humanity capable 
of both, capable of sharp thinking, timely hard 
work here and now, capable also of the super- 
nal, the transcendent splendor there when the 
time shall come ! The glory of the star, the 
glory of the sun ! We must not lose either in 
the other ; we must not be so full of the hope 
of heaven that we cannot do our work on earth ; 
we must not be so lost in the work of earth that 
we shall not be inspired by the hope of heaven. 
God grant us all the contentment and the hope 
which come to those who live in Him who 
covers all yesterday, to-day, and forever with 
Himself. iv. 72 . 

The earth may gain by one man the more, 

And the gain of earth shall be heaven's gain too. 

Browning. 



DECEMBER 16. 351 



Now it is high time to awake out of sleep : 
for now is our salvation nearer tha?i wlien we 
believed. — Romans xiii. 1 1 . 

THOSE words which once came from the 
apostle's lips, expressed the feeling and 
the power which was always in all the 
apostles' hearts. 

And it has been this expectation of the 
coming of the Lord which, ever since the 
time of the apostles, has always been 
the inspiration of the Christian world. The 
noblest souls always have believed that 
humanity was capable of containing, and was 
sure sooner or later to receive, a larger and 
deeper infusion of divinity. The promise of 
Christianity is as yet but half fulfilled. All 
that has been done yet in all the Christian 
centuries is only the sketch and prelude of 
what is yet to be done. . . . And as the 
noblest souls have thought of the world's 
history, so the most earnest men and women 
have always thought of their own lives. The 
power of any life lies in its expectancy. 
"What do you hope for? What do you 
expect?" The answer to these questions 
is the measure of the degree in which a man 
is living. He who can answer these questions 
by the declaration, "The Lord is at hand: 
I am expecting a higher, deeper, more per- 
vading mastery of Christ" — we know that 
he is thoroughly alive. iv. 354, 355 . 



352 DECEMBER 17. 

Wisdom crieth aloud . . . The Lord possessed 
me in the beginning of His way, before His works 
of old. I was set up f'om everlasting, . . . or 
ever the eartli zvas. . . . Before the mountains 
tvere settled, before the hills was I brought forth. 

Prov. viii. 22, 23, 25. 

WHEN the Hebrew used the word " wisdom " 
of man, it covered the whole range of 
spiritual life, either in its moral or its mental 
aspects. . . . There are two layers of power 
in life ; the one that lies upon the top is carnal. 
It is material, inert. It has no power to shape 
itself. The other that lies below is spiritual. 
It is full of force and movement. Skill, judg- 
ment, affection, duty, knowledge, these are its 
elements. Out of it force comes to move the 
dead mass that cannot move itself. The world 
of things is moved by the world of character. 
Perhaps this word, "character," in its spir- 
ituality, and comprehensiveness, and variety, 
most nearly expresses the idea of the old 
"wisdom." . . . 

It shines in many a work of man. Wherever 
it appears it is excellent and beautiful. But its 
true glory is seen back where the thought of 
God first touches the gross chaos with intention 
and a world is born. Its Epic is that first chap- 
ter of Genesis. There where the Spirit of God 
moves upon the face of the lifeless waters and a 
divine voice summons the light and creates 
order, there is Creation, there is the Eternal 
Wisdom moving into visibility. ... All the 
wisdom and skill that is in the world is to be 
traced home to one devising and ordering mind 
that sits above and issued into all our life. 

Oxford Review. 



DECEMBER 18. 353 

Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wis- 
dom and righteousness and sanctification and re~ 
demption. — I. Cor. i. 30. 

REMEMBER what Christ is called in St. 
John's Gospel, " The Word." A word 
is wisdom in utterance. Remember what St. 
Paul calls Christ, " The power of God and the 
wisdom of God." Remember what is said of 
the Word in that first chapter of St. John, 
"In the beginning was the Word. He was 
with God and He was God." " He was in the 
beginning with God." "All things were 
made by Him." "In Him was life, and the 
life was the light of men." It is just exactly 
what is said of Wisdom in . . . Proverbs. 
" The Lord possessed me in the beginning of 
His way." " When He prepared the Heavens, 
I was there." "Whoso findeth Me, findeth 
Life." See how the Word was just the Wis- 
dom at last uttering Itself to a needy world. 
This divine love and grace and truth which 
we have been tracing in Creation and in Provi- 
dence, at last coming, that men might know 
them perfectly, and putting on humanity and 
becoming incarnate in Jesus Christ. 

Oxford Review. 

O Wisdom, Which earnest forth out of the Mouth of 
the Most High, and reachest from one end to the other, 
mightily and sweetly ordering all things : Come and 
teach us the way of prudence. Wisdom, viii. 1, 7 . 



354 DECEMBER 19. 

SURELY this is the most terrible and ghastly 
thing about all sorrow, the sense that it 
must have been prepared for us in all the un- 
conscious days when we never thought of it. 
This is the thought of fate which takes the pang 
of suffering and presses it home into the very 
soul. How old, how everlasting our suffering 
is ! And just then to many a soul Wisdom 
opens her voice and cries. Wisdom, the divine 
mind, the divine intention, will, love, she has 
something to say. " Before the mountains 
were settled, before the hills was I brought 
forth." Yes, the sorrow is old, it says, but the 
plan of God, instinct with love, that made the 
sorrow possible, is older. . . . More eternal, 
more fundamental than your suffering is the 
love, the justice, the thoughtfulness of God. 
Let your soul rest on them and be at peace. 

Oxford Review. 

Amid the awe 
Of unintelligible chastisement, 
Not only acquiescences of faith 
Survived, but daring sympathies with power, 
Motions not treacherous or profane, else why 
Within the folds of no ungentle breast 
Their dread vibration to this hour prolonged ? 
Wild blasts of music thus could find their way 
Into the midst of turbulent events ; 
So that worst tempests might be listened to. 
Then was the truth received into my heart, 
That, under heaviest sorrow earth can bring, 
If from the affliction somewhere do not grow 
Honor which could not else have been, a faith, 
An elevation, and a sanctity, 
If new strength be not given, nor old restored, 
The blame is ours, not Nature's. 

Wordsworth. 



DECEMBER 20. 355 



Christ . . . the wisdom of God. — I. Cor. i. 24. 

WITH this identification in our minds, how 
clear becomes all that we said before 
about the wisdom of God being the soul's 
refuge in affliction and temptation. . . . But 
now it is not the voice of any abstraction, no 
merely celestial wisdom that cries out to him 
and offers to help him, and assures him of its 
own eternity. But it is the dearer, and closer, 
and tenderer voice of a man, of a friend, of 
Christ the Consoler and the Strengthener. 
He speaks, He assures the soul that He is 
older than its sorrow, older than its trial, that 
He has had purposes concerning it that go 
back behind its birth. He was there when the 
arrow was launched, and knows what it was 
sent for. Mounting back along the continuous 
eternity of Christ, the soul outgoes its sorrow, 
and gets back to the purpose of its sorrow 
which it finds folded safe and warm in the 
hand of the eternal Christ's wise love. The 
soul's Christ, with His eternity, dwarfs the 
puny ages of its calamities and makes them 
seem temporary and insignificant. 

> Oxford Review. 

In Him again 
We see the same first, starry attribute, 
" Perfect through suffering," our salvation's seal 
Set in the front of His Humanity. 
For God has other Words for other worlds, 
But for this world the Word of God is Christ. 

Ugo Bassi. Sermon in the Hospital. 



356 DECEMBER 21. 

TT is especially in the great mysterious 
* work of the atonement that Christ is seen 
to be the wisdom, the conquering spiritual 
element in the world. . . . When Jesus 
died, it was as if He lifted up His voice 
and said: "Sin is old, but I am older than 
sin ; sin is strong, but I am stronger than sin ; 
punishment is necessary, but mercy, the 
forgiveness of the penitent, is a necessity 
far back behind that, . deeper in the Eternal 
Divinity. The law began its vengeance 
when man broke it, but ' I was set up from 
everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the 
earth was.' Know, O my brethren, that 
even more original and certain than the truth 
that God must punish you if you do wrong, 
is the higher truth that God will forgive you, 
if you repent.' ' oxford review. 

Blessed be Thou, O Lord, 

So good unto Thy servant, according to the great- 
ness of Thy pity. 
What can I say more in Thy presence, 
But humbly lay myself before Thee, 
Mindful of my iniquity and worthlessness? 
For there is none like Thee 
'Mid all the wonders of the heaven and earth. 
Thy works are very good, 
Thy judgments true, 
And by Thy foresight all is ruled. 
Praise then to Thee and glory, 
O Wisdom of the Father ; 
Bless and praise Him, O my lips, 
My soul and all things that are made. 

Thomas a Kempjs. 



DECEMBER 22. 357 

THREE things concerning (the Puritans) are 
worthy of our notice, — first, that the 
Puritans, who came direct from England, are 
always to be distinguished from the Pilgrims, 
who came by way of Holland and caught some 
of the broader spirit of that " nursery of freedom 
and good-will ; " second, that the noblest utter- 
ance of hopeful tolerance in all that noble cen- 
tury was in the famous speech in which John 
Robinson, their minister, bade loving farewell to 
his departing flock at Leyden, in which occur 
those memorable words: "I am verily per- 
suaded, I am very confident, that the Lord has 
more truth yet to break out of His holy Word ; " 
and thirdly, that somewhere in the bitter heart 
of Puritanism was hidden the power which, 
partly by development, and partly by reaction, 
was to produce the freedom of these modern 

days. Tolerance, 36, 37. 

God of our fathers, Thou who wast, 

Art, and shalt be when those eye-wise who flout 

Thy secret presence shall be lost 

In the great light that dazzles them to doubt, 

We, sprung from loins of stalwart men 

Whose strength was in their trust, 

That Thou wouldst make Thy dwelling in their dust, 

And walk with them, a fellow-citizen, 

Who build a city of the just, 

We, who believe Life's bases rest 

Beyond the probe of chemic test, 

Still, like our fathers, feel Thee near, 

Sure that, while lasts the immutable decree, 

The land to Human Nature dear 

Shall not be unbeloved of Thee. 

James Russell Lowell. 



358 DECEMBER 23, 



DEATH is so old in the world. It lies so 
thick and heavy upon all we do and are. 
But " Life is older than Death/' Christ said, and 
so, when He, the Master, came, the intruder 
yielded before Him. He rose from the grave, 
" because it was not possible that He should 
beholden of it." And so all that He tells us 
of our resurrection, all that St. Paul expounds 
so fully of the power of the spirit, that that 
which is sown a natural body shall be raised a 
spiritual body, what is it all, but an assertion 
that in us, too, the spiritual life is stronger than 
any law of physical decay, and must come up 
through them all to meet the issues of the spirit- 
ual world ? This is the last triumph of that 
spiritual nature which is older and more funda- 
mental than the mountains and the streams, 
when the earth and the sea shall give up their 
dead, because it is not possible that they shall 

be holden Of them. Oxford Review. 



O quickly come, true Life of all ; 

For Death is mighty all around ; 
On every home his shadows fall, 

On every heart his mark is found ; 
O quickly come ; for grief and pain 
Can never cloud Thy glorious reign. 

Lawrence Tuttiett. 



DECEMBER 24. 359 

EVERYWHERE the nature that is conscious 
of the infiniteness of life, longs to believe 
in a manifested God. Its whole disposition is 
toward faith ; and then if any glimpse is 
offered of a Son of God, a manifestation of 
the Invisible Deity who sends happiness 
and sorrow and who can forgive sin, there 
is no tendency to disbelieve, there is* the 
hunger of the heart leaping with fearful 
hope. ... To one who finds the forces of 
this life sufficient, an incarnation, a super- 
natural salvation is incredible. To one who, 
looking deeper, knows there must be some 
infinite force which it has not found yet, — 
some loving, living force of Emmanuel, of 
God with man, — the Son of God is waiting 
on the threshold and will immediately come. 
Christ supposes an element of incompleteness 
everywhere, making a hungry world, — pre- 
paring the whole man not to reject as 
useless and incredible, but to accept as just 
what it needs and expects, a mysterious, a 
supernatural, divine Redemption, preparing 
the mental nature for faith, and the moral 
nature for repentance, and the spiritual 
nature for guidance. To this readiness alone 
can Christ come. v. 208, 209, 

O little town of Bethlehem ! 

How still we see thee lie ; 
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep 

The silent stars go by ; 
Yet in thy dark streets shineth 

The everlasting Light ; 
The hopes and fears of all the years 

Are met in thee to-night. 

Phillips Brooks. 



360 DECEMBER 25. 

Unto us a CJiild is born, — Is. ix. 6. 
They shall call His Name Emmanuel . . . God 
with us. — Matt. i. 23. 

How silently, how silently, 

The wondrous gift is given ! 
So God imparts to human hearts 

The blessings of His heaven. 
No ear may hear His coming, 

But in this world of sin, 
Where meek souls will receive Him still, 

The dear Christ enters in. 

O holy child of Bethlehem ! 

Descend to us we pray ; 
Cast out our sin, and enter in, 

Be born in us to-day. 
We hear the Christmas angels 

The great glad tidings tell ; 
Oh come to us, abide with us, 

Our Lord Emmanuel ! 

Phillips Brooks. 

AND now once more comes Christmas Day. 
Once more, borne abroad on the words 
of simple-minded shepherds, runs the story. 
God and man have met, in visible, actual 
union, in a life which is both human and 
divine. . . . Lift up yourselves to the great 
meaning of the Day, and dare to think of 
your Humanity as something so sublimely 
precious that it is worthy of being made an 
offering to God. Count it a privilege to make 
that offering as complete as possible, keeping 
nothing back, and then go out to the pleasures 
and duties of your life, having been truly born 
anew into His Divinity, as He was born into 
our Humanity, on Christmas Day. 

Christmas Sermon. 



DECEMBER 26. 361 

THE Incarnation opened the spiritual, the 
supernatural, the eternal. It was as if the 
clouds were broken above this human valley 
that we live in, and men saw the Alps above 
them, and took courage. For, remember, it 
was a true Incarnation. It was a real bringing 
of God in the flesh. It was a real assertion of 
the possible union of humanity and divinity ; 
and by all its tender and familiar incidents, by 
the babyhood and home life, the hungerings 
and thirstings of the incarnate Christ, it 
brought the divinity that it intended to reveal 
close into the hearts and houses of mankind. 
It made the supernatural possible as a motive 
in the smallest acts of men, ... It brought 
God so near that no slightest action could hide 
away from Him ; that every least activity of 
life should feel His presence, and men should 
not only lead their armies and make their laws, 
but rise up and go to sleep, walk in the street, 
play with their children, work in their shops, 
talk with their neighbors, all in the fear and 
love of the Lord. L l86# 

(Stephen) said, Behold I see the heavens opened, 
and the Son of Man on the right hand of God, 

Acts vii. 56. 

It is not death, O Christ, to die for Thee : 

Nor is that silence of a silent land 
* Which speaks Thy praise so all may understand : 
Darkness of death makes Thy dear lovers see 
Thyself Who Wast and Art and Art to Be ; 
Thyself, more lovely than the lovely band 
Of saints who worship Thee on either hand 
Loving and loved through all eternity. 

Christina Rossetti. 



362 DECEMBER 27. 



AS we watch Jesus [on the night of 
the Passover] sitting there and telling 
the disciples truth after truth about Himself, 
what words like the old words of the Psalmist 
describe the scene, He is " clothing Himself 
with light as with a garment." We can 
seem to see the lustrous raiment of truth 
gathered about His familiar form, at once 
revealing it to, and hiding it from, His 
amazed disciples ; revealing it to their love, 
hiding it from their understanding, . . . 
until at last the John who had once ques- 
tioned Jesus as if he were a scribe or 
teacher, "Master, where dwellest thou ? " 
is seen writing his reminiscence of it all in 
words that burn with mysterious reverence, 
words that make us think he wrote them on 
his knees. "The Word was made flesh and 
dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, 
the glory as of the only begotten of the 
Father.' ' 11.315,316. 

All at once I looked up with terror. 
He was there. 

He Himself with His human air, 
On the narrow pathway, just before. 
I saw the back of Him, no more — 



No face : only the sight 

Of a sweepy garment, vast and white, 

With a hem that I could recognize. 

Soul of mine, hadst thou caught and held 
By the hem of the vesture ! — And I caught 
At the flying robe, and unrepelled 
Was lapped again in its folds full-fraught 
With warmth and wonder and delight, 
God's mercy being infinite. 

Brownmng. 



DECEMBER 28. 363 

T KNOW that the death of the beggar, the 
1 death of the baby, has in it a mystery of 
force which no wisest man can comprehend. 
I know that He whose life was one with the 
baby's and the beggar's, and yet infinitely 
deeper, vaster, must have had a mystery in 
His death over which eternity shall keep 
guard, husbanding its treasures, and giving 
them forth to the eternally ripening soul as it 
shall need and shall be able to receive them. 
He who tells me that he will read to me now 
the mystery of the death of Jesus, shuts my 
ears with his very offer. I will not let him tear 
for me the mystery of the dawn which no 
hand can hasten as it slowly brightens to the 
full morning. influence. 51. 

[Holy Innocents* Daj/.] 

Oh weep not o'er thy children's tomb, 

Oh Rachel, weep not so ! 
The bud is cropt by martyrdom, 

The flower in Heaven shall blow ! 

Firstlings of faith ! the murderer's knife 

Has miss'd its deadliest aim : 
The God for whom they gave their life, 

For them to suffer came. 

Though feeble were their days and few, 

Baptized in blood and pain, 
He knows them, whom they never knew, 

And they shall live again. 

Reginald Heber. 



364 DECEMBER 29. 

The foundations of the wall of the city were 
garnished with all manner of precious stones. . . . 
The glory of God did lighten it. — Rev. xxi. 19, 23. 

EVERY new experience is a new opportunity 
of knowing God. Every new experience 
is like a jewel set into the texture of our life, 
on which God shines and makes interpretation 
and revelation of Himself. You hang a great 
rich dark cloth up into the sunlight, and the sun 
shines on it and shows the broad general color 
that is there. Then one by one you sew great 
precious stones upon the cloth, and each one, 
as you set it there, catches the sunlight and 
pours it forth in a flood of peculiar glory. A 
diamond here, an emerald there, an opal there, 
the sun seems to rejoice as he finds each 
moment a new interpreter of his splendor, 
until at last the whole jewelled cloth is burn- 
ing and blazing with the gorgeous revelation. 
Now a much-living life, a life of manifold 
experiences, is like a robe which bursts forth 
of itself to jewels. They are not sewn on 
from the outside. They burn out of its sub- 
stance as the stars burn out of the heart of the 
night. And God shines with new revelation 
upon every one. And the man who feels 
himself going out of a dying year with these 
jewels of experience which have burned forth 
from his life during its months, and knowing 
that God in the New Year will shine upon 
them and reveal Himself by them, may well 
go full of expectation, saying, " The Lord is 
at hand." iv. 359 . 






DECEMBER 30. 365 



Brethren, the time is short. — I. Cor. vii. 29. 

1FE as a part, life set upon the background 
^ of eternity, life recognized as the temporary 
form of that whose substance is everlasting, that 
is short; we wait for, we expect its end. And 
remember that to the Christian the interpreta- 
tion of all this is in the Incarnation of Jesus 
Christ. "I am He that liveth, and was dead ; 
and behold, I am alive for evermore.' ' The 
earthly life set against the eternal life, the in- 
corporate earthly form uttering here for a time 
the everlasting and essential being, those years 
shut in out of the eternities between the 
birth and the ascension, that resurrection open- 
ing the prospect of the life that never was to 
end, — these are the never failing interpretation 
to the man who believes in them of the tem- 
poral and eternal in his own experience. 

1. 330, 331. 

Does the precept run " Believe in Good, 

In Justice, Truth, now understood 

For the first time " ? — or, " Believe in Me, 

Who lived and died, yet essentially 

Am Lord of Life"? 

Browning. 



366 DECEMBER 31. 

OH friends, the old year is fast slipping back 
behind us. We cannot stay in it if we 
would. We must go forth and leave our past. 
Let us go forth nobly. Let us go as those 
whom greater thoughts and greater deeds 
await beyond. Let us go humbly, solemnly, 
bravely, as those must go who go to meet the 
Lord. With firm, quiet, serious steps, full of 
faith, full of hope, let us go to meet Him who 
will certainly judge us when we meet Him, 
but who loves us while He judges us, and who, 
if we are only obedient, will make us, by the 
discipline of all the years, fit for the everlast- 
ing world, where life shall count itself by 
years no longer. iv. 3 6 9 . 

Time's waters will not ebb, nor stay, 
Power cannot change them, but Love may; 

What cannot be, Love counts it done. 
Deep in the heart, her searching view 
Can read where Faith is fix'd and true, 
Through shades of setting life can see Heaven's 
work begun. 

O Thou, who keep'st the Key of Love, 
Open Thy fount, eternal Dove, 

And overflow this heart of mine, 
Enlarging as it fills with Thee, 
Till in one blaze of charity 
Care and remorse are lost, like motes in light divine ; 

Till as each moment wafts us higher, 
By every gush of pure desire, 

And high-breathed hope of joy above, 
By every secret sigh we heave, 
Whole years of folly we outlive, 
In His unerring sight, who measures Life by Love. 

Keble. 



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